[ad_1]
Although a significant number of world leaders use social media to reach a wide audience, Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly stated that he does not have accounts on the networks.
The digital forensic investigation laboratory DFRLab considers it strange that this politician does not use social networks to establish a selfish narrative and skew public perception in his own way. However, both Facebook and Instagram have many pages that use their identity.
V.Putinas on Facebook
DFRLab has reviewed 69 Facebook pages that use Putin’s name, image, or some variation of his first and last name.
About a third of those pages indicate that it is an account of a political fanatic. Just over a quarter tries to give the impression that the page really belongs to the Russian president.
However, these accounts glorify the President of Russia and spread a pro-Kremn narrative to Russian-speaking Facebook users.
The two large pages, which used Putin’s identity, are for Facebook users in the Middle East and North Africa, but are run from Russia.
The five pages analyzed were created in Russia, the other 24 pages, by people from all continents of the world, except Antarctica.
The total number of followers on the analyzed Facebook pages was 5.6 million, which is slightly more than on Instagram, where Putin’s surname attracted 4.1 million followers.
Photo by Scanpix / ITAR-TASS / Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin, the largest site, has more than 2 million. followers, its founders do not pretend to be anything, they do not hide being fans of the Russian president. Interestingly, half of the followers fell in love with the page fairly quickly, in eight months.
According to CrowdTangle, the most interesting content for consumers related to the Russian president were the images of the politician released in October 2015 and the birthday greetings in Russian, English, Serbian and Arabic.
Dozens of Facebook accounts have been added to these posts, most likely to be noticed by as many people as possible. Some of the accounts had 600-4000 friends and were from very different countries: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Russia, and others.
The accounts also voluntarily disseminated and shared information about the actions of the Russian army in Syria.
Paid for broadcast
The second largest Facebook page, which uses Putin’s name, has 1.3 million. followers, his name is “Russian President Vladimir Putin”, written in Arabic. Spread information about the presence of Russian troops in the Middle East.
Its audience grew sharply from January 2018 to April 2019, then began to shrink in strides, the page was also advertising for money.
In 2019, the site paid for the dissemination of content related to the opening of a mosque in Crimea, the money received by Russian families, the construction of a rocket in Russia, a socially responsible Russian policy, the willingness of the Russian government to work for a better life.
However, the data shows that supporters were more interested in Russia’s policy towards the Middle East. The researchers believe that the pages in question do not have false followers.
Both mentioned pages are administered from Russia, but there is one page from Latvia.
Most of them are named after the Russian president, but there are also people like “Vladimir Putin – the world leader” (ruled from Greece) or “Vladimir Putin – the beloved wise president of the Holy Mother of Russia” (ruled from the States United).
V.Putinas on instagrame
DFRLab found at least 20 accounts on Vladimir Putin’s instagram. Some of them do not indicate that they are fan pages.
The oldest account was created five years ago. In it, Putin is portrayed as a powerful, muscular, and hardened Russian leader. Most accounts are managed from Russia, indicating that their target audience is Russian speakers.
Even laughter positively illuminates
The instigator’s 20 pages are falsely trying to portray that he belongs to the President of Russia. However, it is not Putin who is known for his Instagram accounts, but also his administration, which uses only Twitter and YouTube platforms. The most popular account is called putin.life, and it has more than a million followers.
Somewhere in the 90 percent. accounts to glorify the President of Russia or this country. The messages that received the most attention collected from 1.8 to 49.9 thousand. “I like it”.
Some accounts mock Putin, but they also portray him positively.
[ad_2]
