Filling the gaps in this area is the aim of a new study by specialists from the Institute of Economics KarRC RAS and the Federal Center for Integrated Arctic Research, Ural Branch RAS, which is being conducted within the research project "Digital divide and local administrations: a view through social media" supported by Russian Science Foundation grant # 23-28-00685.
– The digital divide objectively exists. It is difficult to estimate the magnitude of the problem at the level of districts or settlements because of the lack of information: regarding the number of computers, the speed of the Internet, the fees. The idea of the project is to use an alternative way to examine the difference and identify vulnerable areas, – told Egor Prokopyev, Research Leader, Senior Researcher at the Department for Regional Development Modeling and Forecasting, Institute of Economics KarRC RAS.
The object of the study was social media - a tool for communication and dissemination of information understandable to the majority of users, and more specifically - the official public groups of local authorities in VKontakte social network.
– Since social media cannot exist without the Internet, the time of their creation can indicate the differences in the rate of digitalization. There are some indirect indicators that we can use to estimate the intensity of the use of Internet technologies, the degree of their development and the hindrances, - the researcher explained.
Egor Prokopyev, Senior Researcher, Department for Regional Development Modeling and Forecasting, Institute of Economics KarRC RAS
The geography of the project covers all regions of the Northwestern District of the Russian Federation, except St. Petersburg, and the time frame is from 2011 through 2022. At the first stage, the scientists' task was to identify the factors conducive to the emergence of official groups of municipalities of the Northwestern Federal District in the VKontakte social network. To this end, the scientists surveyed the existence of authority's public groups in more than a thousand urban and rural settlements and two hundred districts.
The data sources were open information from the social media itself and Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) databases. The calculation technique designed by the authors permits taking into account mean salary data, interactive maps provide information on the distance to district and regional centers, and Central Election Commission databases offer information about heads of settlements.
As a result, the researchers determined the factors that influence the creation of public groups by local authorities. In general, the significant positive factors for all types of municipalities were the population size, the amount of budget revenues and expenditures. At the same time, a direct correlation with the level of budgetary independence was noted for districts, and with mean salaries for settlements.
The influence of the head of a municipal entity differs between the levels of district and settlement. For example, for districts, the arrival of an "outsider" increased the chances of a VK group being created, as he or she had to get acquainted with locals and demonstrate performance. For settlements, age was a significant factor: younger heads were more willing to add social media to their work.
According to Egor Prokopyev, although all municipalities are now required by law to have official groups in social media, the situation at the settlement level is far from that. By the end of 2021, almost all districts and urban okrugs in the NWFD did create official groups. As for settlements, however, only 65% of them had public groups at the beginning of 2023. The Leningrad and Vologda Regions are in the lead.
Curiously, one of the factors reducing the likelihood of having a group in VK was the district center status.
– This is a consequence of the processes of merging the administrations of the district and the district center. As a result, the interests of the settlement are dissolved in the day-to-day issues of the district or vice versa, which leads to poorer communication between local authorities and the population, – remarked Egor Prokopyev.
Working with a focus group within the survey in Prionezhsky District, Karelia.
The meeting was arranged with the assistance of the Union of Municipal Divisions of the Republic of Karelia
The first authority’s public group in Karelia appeared in Pitkyarantsky District in 2012. The first to create a VK page among settlements - a year earlier than Petrozavodsk - was the Megrega Rural Settlement of Olonetsky District, in 2014. In 2022, according to the survey data, the most active in VK were residents of the Olonetsky District, among settlements - residents of Rabocheostrovskoye Rural Settlement of the Kemsky District. Kuganavolokskoye Rural Settlement of the Pudozhsky District is the leader in terms of the share of subscribers relative to the population size. The number of subscribers in its official public group is twice as high as the number of residents. This may indicate that even after moving away, people stay in touch with their native village.
An output of the first stage of the project is the registered database "Municipal entities of the Northwestern Federal District in VKontakte in 2011-2022". The availability of such a system is important given the shortage of available information.
The scientists still have a lot of work ahead of them to perform the content analysis of the authorities' public pages, using i.a. neural networks, and to assess the citizens' involvement in their activity. For this purpose, 900 thousand posts have already been collected. The project will produce the theoretical and methodological guidelines for organizing online communication between the citizens and the authorities. A system of indicators measuring the digital divide in the use of social media for the needs of local administrations will be created. Based on the results, the experts will prepare a series of analytical reports for regional and municipal authorities.
Photo gallery: availability of district’s official groups in regions of the Northwestern Federal District at the end of 2013, 2017, and 2021.
