Russian Authorities to Monitor Public Discontent on Social Media

Criticizing President Putin on social media is about to become much more difficult, as a new monitoring system called “Incident Management” is set to be launched. The purpose of “Incident Management” is to track how Russian citizens react to government actions online.

The development of this new system has been entrusted to Medialogia LLC, whose representatives have already confirmed that they are working on “Incident Management” and plan to supply it to several Russian regions in the future.

The following social platforms will be closely monitored by the new system: VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The results of this monitoring will be sent to an administrator, who will decide which angry messages from Russian citizens require a response. All messages will be grouped by topic, and local authorities will be required to respond to the identified issues within 24 hours.

According to sources, the decision to create “Incident Management” was made after the tragic incident at the Zimnyaya Vishnya shopping center in Kemerovo. The situation with the landfill in Volokolamsk also served as a trigger. The authors of the initiative note that during these incidents, local authorities made significant mistakes, including failing to pay enough attention to public dissatisfaction expressed online.

Currently, the “Incident Management” system is being tested in ten regions of the Russian Federation.