Should a President be on Facebook?

After the biggest recorded anti-government protest since Soviet times, at least 7,000 comments had appeared on Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s Facebook page (BBC). It was his comments on Saturday’s election protest that drew anger in the citizens. “I do not agree with either the slogans or statements heard at the rallies,” wrote the President. Facebook users pointed that their slogan was “for Honest Elections”; “Pathetic liar” was another. Which one does he mean? The Present, who prides himself on his use of social media, recently suffered from an embarrassment on Twitter.

The content of this article focuses on the contents of President Medvedev’s comments on his Facebook page, which draws upon a couple ways of knowing: It draws upon the accuracy of media literacy, and the invalidity of reason and logic. Furthermore, the article itself draws upon the issue with language and media literacy when compared to other news reports that cover the same content.

Media literacy is the key component of the content of the article. The discussion centres on a Facebook comment made by the Present.

Facebook is, as it stands, a “social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them”. It is possible that the purpose of President Medvedev’s use of colloquial social media is to bring his people closer to him. An advantage to having a page for the President is the ability to construct a point of view without having the need to call for TV personnel to record it. Posting a comment on a commonly used Facebook page is a quick and efficient way to get across a message. Media is also a good way to put forth ideological and value messages. In President Medvedev’s case, he uses the mainstream media to convey a personal statement that he does not agree on statements and slogans made on the protest. However, as the media can sometimes construct reality, based on the observations of the person covering the story. In order to avoid that, President Medvedev created his own Facebook page to post his own comments about his own beliefs, which arguably is more accurate that what the media will portray.

However, what the media doesn’t get to achieve when constructing reality, audiences will when negotiating the meaning in the media. In the president’s case, when he disagreed with “either the slogans or statements heard at the rallies,” many “hostile” (according to BBC) comments replied that their official slogan had been “for honest elections”. Yet this slogan is amongst many other slogans such as “pathetic liar”. Whether the president refers his disagreement to the former or the latter is hard to tell. Media presents information that is crafted into a certain perspective it is hard to take them apart and see the overall picture. I think President Medvedev has made quite a bold, yet effective statement by posting his opinions on a colloquial social media rather than say, TV news. He is able to reduce the projector’s point of view by omitting a projector, and is able to voice his own opinions with very minimal commercial implications. It can be certain that audiences will still view his opinions in their own way to fit personal needs based on their individual factor, as it is obvious in the comments mentioned in the article. However, this does allow a more intimate back-and-forth connection between the president and the people.

A similar incident also occurs in a Dutch airline, KLM, as they are developing a “social seating” based on the social media profiles of their passengers (CNN). Both cases are utilizing media literacy, regardless if one uses for a more direct communication and the other for seating arrangements. Because of the media’s subjectivity it is arguably not a good idea to utilize it for conventional use such as during an election or for the seating arrangement for an airline. Not only will this potentially jeopardize the outcome of both cases, it raises a lot of issues with the different points of views as different people experience the same messages differently.