How Politicians and Citizens Failed to Meet on the Web in 2011

Vox populi, vox Dei goes the famous Latin saying from two thousand years ago. Today, however, it is not entirely valid. Or at least not for the developments in the Bulgarian political blogosphere and political communication on Twitter in 2011.

Politicians

The years 2009 and 2011 are alike. Double elections were held in Bulgaria in both years: for national and European parliament in 2009, and for president and local government in 2011. But as for the Bulgarian blogosphere, things changed. In 2009 many Bulgarian politicians had their own blogs and there were more than thirty active blogs, with activity declining dramatically after election night. The number of regularly updated blogs and postings on them continued to decline in the next two years. As the chart below shows, although there were new elections in 2011 the number of postings was considerably lower than in 2009 even in the months of the elections (June-July 2009, October 2011). Only about a dozen Bulgarian politicians kept updating their blogs, but the number of postings on them was only a fraction of that in the previous election year.

Figure 1. Total number of postings on Bulgarian politicians’ blogs by month, from January 2009 to December 2011.

Be it because this form of communication is no longer so trendy or because it failed to yield the expected electoral results, the fact is that in 2011 blogging was used much less as a tool for political marketing.

Bulgarian politicians, however, did not give up internet communication. Their interest shifted to the trendier and far more popular Facebook and Twitter. If in 2009 about a dozen Bulgarian politicians had accounts on the microblogging platform Twitter, in 2010 their number doubled. In 2011 the number of Bulgarian politicians with Twitter accounts grew significantly, and the new users included the leading candidates in the presidential race and the local government elections. It is noteworthy that Bulgarian politicians tend to use Twitter as well as the blogosphere mostly for campaign purposes, with their activity rising in election months and declining sharply in non-election periods. This applies to both election years and became especially obvious in 2011. It is also noteworthy that in 2010 there were many fake profiles of politicians, while in 2011 there were practically none.

Figure 2. Total number of tweets by Bulgarian politicians by month, from January 2009 to December 2011.

Admittedly, in the period under review there were Bulgarian politicians with a responsible and consistent attitude towards communication on social networking sites. For example, Ivaylo Kalfin, MEP and Bulgarian Socialist Party candidate for president in 2011. Kalfin has been regularly updating his blog for years, posting critical and analytical articles on topical political issues. Another good example is active tweeter and incumbent Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov, whose tweets concern not only international issues of importance to Bulgarian society but also answer questions from Bulgarian citizens.

Citizens

Although Bulgarian politicians were no longer so active in the blogosphere, they did not give up blogs as a tool for influence. They increasingly sought support from citizen blogs discussing social and political issues. Bulgarian politicians changed their tactic – instead of seeking to influence the public through their own blogs, they now sought to influence bloggers. Even the newly elected president, Rosen Plevneliev, found time in his campaign schedule to meet with prominent citizen bloggers. Also telling is the fact that Plevneliev addressed bloggers with the compliment that they are the true representatives of ‘citizen journalism … the true voice of society’.

Indeed, over the years citizens’ blogs have become a platform for intelligent and active Bulgarians, an alternative to the formally independent but obviously politically influenced content of Bulgarian mainstream media. In 2011 we saw a weak but stable tendency towards growing public influence of bloggers. Their acknowledgement did not come only from the actions of politicians during the election campaign. Last year more and more bloggers were invited by various Bulgarian television channels, radio stations and print media to comment on and discuss various social, political and economic issues.

Bulgarian bloggers themselves have also become much more active in seeking information and various alternatives and opportunities for speaking out for the public. One example of this growing engagement came from two bloggers who organized a campaign debate between the candidates for mayor of Sofia which was broadcast online. Launched in 2010 at the initiative of a blogger and modeled on the Obamameter, the website PolitiKat.net, which keeps track of politicians’ promises and whether they are kept, was also active during last year’s elections.

Video blogs (vlogs), a format new to Bulgaria, also became increasingly popular in 2011. Vlogs are now very popular on YouTube and there are quite a few Bulgarian vloggers. But very few of them vlog about politics.

Topics

Despite the growing public and media acknowledgement of the importance of bloggers’ voices, in 2011 (as in the previous years) there was a drastic difference in the content and topics discussed on the blogs and Twitter profiles of Bulgarian politicians on one side and of citizens on the other. The agenda of topics discussed on citizens’ blogs and Twitter profiles did not correspond to that of politicians. As in the previous years, communication on Bulgarian politicians’ blogs and even on their new Twitter profiles was mostly formal, without a significant attempt at keeping in touch with readers and other internet users. Bulgarian citizens, for their part, were concerned with and actively discussed among themselves various everyday and existential topics and issues.

The most discussed topics in the Bulgarian blogosphere in 2011 were the following: the elections for president and vice-president; the poor organization of the elections; the events in the village of Katunitsa, where riots broke out after a nineteen-year-old ethnic Bulgarian was run over and killed by a person close to a notorious Roma bigwig; shale gas exploration and extraction; Bulgaria’s accession to Schengen; the scandals over several energy projects, and the suspension of the licence of the Bulgarian Lukoil Neftochim Refinery; the so-called ‘Tanovgate’, a scandal that flared up after the leakage of wiretapped conversations between senior government officials, suggesting corruption; the absence of free and independent media; the interior ministry’s failure to cope with crime; the inappropriate verbal and semantic constructs and inadequate government decisions and behaviour of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov – all of them being topics and issues that were passed over in silence or given insufficiently adequate answers in Bulgarian politicians’ blog postings or tweets.
Another taboo topic for Bulgarian politicians was also popular among citizen bloggers in 2011 – namely, the WikiLeaks cables about Bulgaria published on Bivol.bg, a Bulgarian whistleblowing website.

Last year also saw growing consolidation of protest moods against Boyko Borisov’s government. Whereas in 2009 the three-party coalition government (BSP, NDSV and DPS) and President Georgi Parvanov were the most criticized by Bulgarian bloggers, in 2011 the main anti-hero was Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, followed by Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov.

The Voice of Bloggers Is the Voice of the People

If we borrow newly elected President Plevneliev’s definition that bloggers are the true voice of society, we may assume that the voice of bloggers is vox populi, vox Dei. This, however, is in sharp contrast with the tendency whereby the topics and issues that are important to bloggers are not discussed in the wider public sphere and their demands are ignored by politicians.

Nor should we forget one of the lessons of 2011: the Arab Spring. Although in a more dramatic context, one of the most important international events in recent years clearly showed that where politicians do not heed the voice of citizens, where traditional media manipulate their content politically, citizens will mobilize through social networking media and destroy the status quo. ‘The barricades today do not bristle with bayonets and rifles, but with phones,’ writes Peter Beaumont in The Guardian. That is why perhaps it is time for Bulgarian politicians to start listening to the voice of society and to try to meet with citizens – both online and offline.