Geopolitical, Social Security and Freedom Journal, Volume 3 Issue 1, 2020 Social media and politics: the case of Ukraine Alessandra Alberti Link Campus University (Italy) Email: Ludovico De Serio University of Genoa (Italy); Email: [email protected] Doi: 10.2478/gssfj-2020-0006 Abstract Nowadays, politics is undergoing several changes, especially because of the growing use of social media from politicians, who are using these virtual platforms as tools to gain more and more consent. Social media are also leading to extreme democratization of politics, making it possible for non-politicians not only to enter the sphere of politics but even to win major competitions, such as presidential elections. To bring an actual and highly illustrative example, in this article the authors go through a deep analysis of the former actor and recently elected prime minister of Ukraine Volodimir Zelenskij and his strategical use of social media compared to the one carried out by his opponents, leading him to win the presidential elections with an enormous consent. Keywords: Politics, Social media, Ukraine, election campaign, political communication 1. Introduction Nowadays, the Internet has allowed anyone to make free and independent information and has introduced new bottom-up forms of information control. Thanks to its openness and multifaceted nature, the network has given an active role to the third actor of political communication (the voters) previously relegated to a passive and spectatorial role. The birth of social media has reintroduced into the circle of political communication voices that did not exist before or did not have the tools to make themselves heard and influence political decisions. The digital age has therefore increased the potential for political participation by the citiz ens who have no access to the network on the most varied platforms. 65 Geopolitical, Social Security and Freedom Journal, Volume 3 Issue 1, 2020 1.1. Zelensky: from TV to reality The President on TV became the President in reality. The history of Volodymyr Zelensky, the newly elected leader of Ukraine, is all here: a comedian who played in a tv-series of enormous success which foresaw with surprising precision what then came out at the polls in reality. Zelensky had no experience in managing public affairs and, perhaps also, for this reason, the Ukrainians have given him an overwhelming consensus, over 73% compared to the 25% collected by the outgoing President Petro Poroshenko. The obvious and probably more simplistic analysis of the vote brought to think that this is the result of harsh condemnation of the five years of government. An issue that combined with the strong reaction to corruption rooted in the country and the widespread social unhappiness may explain the so-called "vote of protest". The article intends to outline the media character of Zelensky through an analysis of how the way of doing politics has changed over the years. A shift that necessarily changed also the stereotype of the new politician. The focus is then set on the electoral campaigns of Zelensky, which, for the very first time, is based only on digital channels. The newly elected President had avoided any direct comparisons with the press and political debates with the other candidates - except for a single meeting with Poroshenko, held a few days before the ballot, at the Olympic stadium in Kyiv. The analysis also wants to highlight the social positioning of Zelensky - through a quantitative comparison between his Facebook and Twitter pages and Poroshenko's ones - and the content shared during his campaign, especially taking into account Zelensky’s modalities of approach. 2. The media profile of Zelenski When, in 2019, the comedian and TV producer Volodymyr Zelensky surprisingly announced the decision to advance his candidature challenging the heroine of the orange revolution Yulia Tymoshenko and the outgoing President, Petro Poroshenko, a few people believed that he could have won. After leading polls for weeks and dominating the first round - Sunday, April 21st - Zelensky won the run-off and became the President of Ukraine. He triumphed with a political program based mostly on two aspects: the eradication of corruption and inefficiency and the fight against the lobbies and the oligarchs of every political faith. The population convinced that to govern properly is a better and inexperienced but honest citizen rather than an experienced and corrupt 66 Geopolitical, Social Security and Freedom Journal, Volume 3 Issue 1, 2020 politician, preferred the new face of Zelensky at the command. Born in 1978, graduated in law, son of a professor of cybernetics, Zelensky joined the historical collective comedy with KVN, a first Soviet and then Russian humor tv show. He then founded his group, Kvartal 95, a production company of TV formats born in 2003 through which he became «monopolist of domestic humor»1, positioning himself at the top of the ranking of the most successful showbiz companies in Ukraine. It is with Kvartal 95 that he gave the assault to Ukrainian television, becoming one of the most famous faces on the small screen. However, the qualitative leap only took place in 2015, when the 1 + 1 channel of the oligarch Igor Kolomoisky began broadcasting "Servant of the People", a very popular TV series that narrates the story of a high school history teacher, Vasyl Petrovych Holoborodko (played by Volodymyr Zelensky), who unexpectedly wins the elections to the presidency of Ukraine, after a viral video filmed by one of his students shows him angrily ranting against government corruption in Ukraine; from the show to the reality. As a matter of fact, something similar happened to the actor in real life. In March 2018, Zelensky founded a party called specifically "Servant of the People" - a name copied and pasted from the show - and after months, on New Year's Eve, he announced his candidacy through one of his shows from the TV screens. However, there are also some shadows surrounding Zelensky’s figure. Many people point out his ambiguous closeness to Igor Kolomoisky, one of the richest Ukrainian oligarchs who also owns the 1 + 1 television channel where the program of the Presidential candidate was broadcasted and which, in the days of the elections, launched the third season of Servant of the People. The suspicion is that the entire election campaign of Zelensky was not only financed by Kolomoisky but also conceived by the powerful and controversial oligarch who in 2015 resigned as governor of Dnepropetrovsk precisely because of conflicts with the former president Porošenko, after a claim on different financial irregularities to his name. These suppositions brought to the belief according to which Zelensky would be under the direct control of Kolomoisky, while the oligarch himself was preparing to undermine the power system of President Porošenko, his great enemy. Of course, these were only allegations, always rejected by Volodymyr Zelensky, who declares himself a “man of the people”. 1 Machado A. (2015) “Corruption and Monopolies - An Endemic Problem”, Forbes. 67 Geopolitical, Social Security and Freedom Journal, Volume 3 Issue 1, 2020 What is evident in the figure of Zelensky is that his character from fiction became reality through a process of building an image that from script became storytelling, a guided and strategically structured one. When the term "image" is used in political communication, it is always necessary to explain to which aspect of this reality we are referring to. There is a dual phenomenology of the image: the projected image and the perceived image2. Projected image means the politician's image to be diffused through the media and this is the image that must reach - intact, enhanced or deformed - the defined targets. The perceived image is instead a subjective mental construct influenced by the projected messages, therefore the mental representation of reality conditioned by the sensory stimuli aroused by the strategy of transmitting the image and filtered by mental schemes. By analysing the figure of Zelensky, it’s possible to affirm that, to a certain degree, in his character, the two phenomena merged. The message of his entire electoral campaign and the projected image of the non-corrupt politician who can give the country a new face reached 73% of Ukrainians as it wanted to be conveyed by the politician himself. Selfies with his supporters, emotional speeches are consistent with the image of the character: a young comedian with no political experience, apparently far from the stereotypes that characterize the post-Soviet political elites. In this "metapolitical" electoral campaign3, the image of Zelensky-comic merges with the Zelensky- political thanks to the media positioning he created through the wise use of social networks and effective storytelling. 2 Gianpiero Mazzoleni (2017). La comunicazione politica (3rd ed.). Bologna: Il Mulino. 3 ibidem 68 Geopolitical, Social Security and Freedom Journal, Volume 3 Issue 1, 2020 3. New political communication. In the late eighties, with the advent of what in the literature was defined as "media challenge"4, political communication has changed considerably. The Internet, thanks to its interactive nature, has re-launched direct communication between politicians and vice versa, obviating the communicative asymmetry of the mass media. From this moment the strategic representation of the figure of the politicians on the mass media has become a prerequisite of their presence and the image seems to assume central importance for the self-representation of politicians5. A new style of politics emerged, which fundamentally changes both the assumptions and the practices of the political context.6 The shift to the new politics has been deeply influenced by the media, and by the politicians who now need to master the media and public relations techniques. This new style of politics is also a consequence of a weakened power of the parties themselves and citizens should now be treated as an audience as much as an electorate – an approach which Zelensky has greatly furthered.