Vodka-cast
Friday, October 10th, 2008 by Jon Clements
“Good evening comrades!” Sadly, this wasn’t the way Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, greeted viewers to his inaugural vodcast this week.
Hosted on the Kremlin website, the video address (as the site calls it) shows the leader at his desk saying “Hello dear friends”, which I suppose extends to anyone who isn’t thinking of attempting self-government in the Russian Federation.
Well done Medvedev for seeing a value in new media, though his efforts still lag far behind those of Barack Obama’s online presence but probably on a par with Downing Street’s.
But finding new ways to talk to people is nothing new for politicians. In the 30s and 40s, US president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt used his famous “Fireside Chats”, a series of 30 radio broadcasts to the nation between 1933 and 1944, to explain major events and rally support for the Government’s plans in another time of economic meltdown. During a similar period, Adolf Hitler, employed film maker, Leni Riefenstahl, to produce propoganda for far more sinister purposes.
Whether it be Fidel Castro’s regulation four-hour speeches or Tony Blair’s “Big Conversation”, positioned as the biggest public consultation ever but mocked for being rather the biggest “monologue”, politics needs to find new ways to connect.
Will the Russian president’s foray into vodcasts take the chill off the Great Bear? We might have some trouble getting them to share the analytics.
