According to Evgeny Minchenko, the “golden age” of political PR in Russia was the beginning of the 2000s:
At one time, the profession of a political strategist was very fashionable. The early 2000s saw the era of large budgets, which lasted until about 2004, when gubernatorial elections were cancelled. Since then, everything has gradually gone downhill.
Yevgeny Minchenko
However, thanks to the development of social networks and especially the emergence of Telegram, there has been a rise in political PR. Firstly, due to the low entry threshold, almost anyone, regardless of uruguay mobile database education and reputation, can start a channel and promote their political views. Thanks to this, many resources have appeared that partly take on the functions of the media: they publish news and insights, share opinions and their own analytics. Among the most notable political projects are the Telegram channels BRIEF, NEZYGAR, 16 Negrityat and others.
The big question is whether this can be called political PR or is it a media story. It costs pennies to create an editorial office for an anonymous Telegram channel, but if you get into a niche, you can quickly become a leader in it. However, this era is already passing — the main niches are occupied.
Evgeny Minchenko
Secondly, the impetus for the development of political PR in social networks was the Government's order , which obliged state bodies to be open to society and maintain their pages in Odnoklassniki and VK. This significantly changed the rules of the game in political PR.
The new regulation allows government agencies to spend money on work on the Internet, and this is good: state social networks establish high-quality feedback with the population and help people solve their everyday problems. However, another difficulty arises here: who and how will manage these publics.
Dialog is developing an online educational platform for civil servants, whose tasks include, among other things, training personnel to manage government agency accounts — from a district clinic to the governor. Specialists are taught not only basic skills, but also advanced tools such as ChatGPT.
There is a development by ANO Dialogue Regions based on ChatGPT: a state public moderator enters data there and receives practically ready content - cards, videos, and so on. First of all, this is a reference that makes life easier for a PR specialist, saves time and gives the opportunity to do more than he did a year ago.