Let me tell you something interesting and important about our project, Popular Politics.
As you probably remember, this is our experiment in publishing a “political tabloid.” We can’t produce a full-fledged media outlet (we don’t know how, we don’t want to, and that isn’t our goal), so we chose a very simple concept. In Popular Politics:
We’ve just released a new issue of Popular Politics — the fourth one so far.
All issues of the newspaper are available at pop-politics.today — you can not only download and distribute them, but also sign up for notifications when a new issue comes out.
We also chose an unconventional, decentralized system for printing and distribution (we came up with this model while distributing the newspaper For Navalny): if there is a group of active, capable people in a region — or even just one person — then they a) download the newspaper themselves, b) optionally add their own materials, c) raise money for printing and distribution themselves, and d) print it themselves and hire distributors to place it in mailboxes.
In other words, our role comes down to producing the newspaper in PDF format and helping activists raise money. Neither print runs nor finances pass through us. Under the rules of the project, everyone involved in fundraising must connect their Yandex Money wallets (a Russian online payment service) to an open-audit system so that all donors can track how the money is spent.
Naturally, from the very beginning we kept asking ourselves the question that is probably in your mind right now: is this actually effective? Does anyone read newspapers that are distributed for free in mailboxes? We really don’t want to waste time or ask you to spend your money on something that has no persuasive effect.
There was definitely a political effect: we saw an extremely nervous reaction from the authorities, attempts to confiscate the newspaper, and after the issue about Volodin’s granite garden beds, the Kremlin even started printing and distributing a fake version of Popular Politics.
That delighted and amused us enormously, but our goal is not just to have fun and annoy crooks. Our goal is to create a newspaper with a circulation in the millions that can influence hundreds of thousands of people.
That’s when ACF’s sociological team (ACF is the Anti-Corruption Foundation) came to our aid and conducted several panel studies for us — huge thanks to all the volunteers — to determine whether the newspaper actually works.
I’m pleased to present the results of the sociological research:
A week before distribution, we selected several residential buildings — usually 6 to 10 — in the area where the newspaper would be distributed, as well as in a “control” area, meaning one where there would be no distribution. Sometimes the buildings were chosen at random; sometimes we were testing different hypotheses, and then we selected buildings with and without concierges, near transit stations and the metro, and conversely ones too far from the metro to reach on foot.
It was important to survey residents of specific buildings so that we could later verify especially carefully whether the newspaper had actually been distributed there.
A week before distribution, our brave field volunteers went out with maps and tablets to survey residents. Among the general questionnaire items was the one most important to us: “Please tell us which of these events you know about, have heard something about, or are hearing about for the first time right now.”
The list of cases included “ordinary” events — something like the anniversary of Alla Pugacheva (a famous Russian singer) — and “our” stories about deputies, offshore accounts, and pensions. As a rule, recognition of “our” stories was very low, and even that was often false. This is a fairly common phenomenon: people are embarrassed to admit that they don’t know something or haven’t heard about it.
At the end of the interview, the volunteer had to do the hardest part: ask the person to leave some contact information (email, or preferably a mobile phone number). The volunteer explained that the study had two stages, that we would contact them for a short phone conversation, ask a couple more questions, and then permanently delete their number.
As a rule, about half of those surveyed left their contact details. Taking part in a panel study is always a bit of an ordeal for respondents. In commercial research, participation is usually rewarded with money. We just had to persuade people — every field has its own specifics.
A week after the newspaper was distributed, we called the respondents who had left their contact details. The number varied from panel to panel, but we usually made 250 to 300 calls.
We already knew whom we were calling, so the phone questionnaire really was very short. Again, there was a list of cases (new and old “ordinary” cases, plus “our” cases that we had covered in the newspaper) and a question about what the respondent had found in their mailbox: advertising, bills, payment notices, a newspaper with a made-up name (a steady 2% of respondents claimed to have found one), the local district administration newspaper, Popular Politics, nothing, didn’t open the mailbox. In different waves of the study, between 17% and 22% of respondents found our newspaper in their mailbox and remembered its name — two to three percentage points more than the local district newspaper.
We did the same in the “control” area — the empty one, where no distribution had taken place. And every time we got the same level of event recognition “before” and “after,” while the same share of respondents claimed to have found our newspaper in their mailbox as claimed to have found a completely nonexistent newspaper (from 1% to 3%, depending on the wave).
Now look at the results. Some stories took off in a truly incredible way — look at the change in the “I know about it” category for the story about Volodin’s dacha: 16 percentage points! Other topics were remembered less well, for example the story about Serdyukov’s amnesty (which already had a strong starting point “before”) or the story about Shoigu’s plane.
We’ve specially prepared graphics for you, each of which can be retweeted separately. Share them with your friends so that as many people as possible can see our results.
So in the end, we can say with confidence: the newspaper works. People read it and remember it. It has an informational effect that can be measured by sociological methods. Hooray.
So now we’re asking you to support an issue of Popular Politics in your region not because you trust us, but because it’s a good use of a few hundred rubles of your money.
In this post, we wrote about those who had already started launching the newspaper locally. You helped 15 regions raise the necessary amount. The number of regions is growing, and we’re very happy about that.
Everywhere has its own specifics, its own difficulties, and activists with varying levels of energy — that’s normal. In some places only one issue has come out, while in Altai Krai they have already printed 3 issues. Some print runs are very small; others print more. The current leaders in circulation are St. Petersburg and Tula Region.
Here is the list of regions already participating in the project. Choose yours — or any one you like — and do something useful: sponsor an issue of Popular Politics:
Voronezh Region:
Irkutsk Region:
Penza Region:
Perm Krai:
Kaliningrad Region:
Kirov Region:
Kurgan Region:
Lipetsk Region:
Sverdlovsk Region:
Omsk Region:
Tyumen Region:
Kemerovo:
Kaluga Region:
Altai Krai:
Vladimir Region:
Vologda Region:
Moscow Region (Krasnogorsk):
Moscow Region (Stupino):
Nizhny Novgorod Region:
Komi Republic:
Republic of Tatarstan:
St. Petersburg:
Tula Region:
Obninsk:
This table contains information about planned and printed circulation numbers in these regions, as well as those that have only just started fundraising.
The level of censorship and brainwashing is now so high that in many cities, PP is literally the only source of truth for people who do not use the internet. Want to print and distribute it in your own city? Great — join those already doing it in Barnaul, Vladimir, Ukhta, Krasnodar, and across the country. Write to us at gazeta@navalny.ru
A rolling stone gathers no moss, and your elderly neighbor will keep voting for Putin because the zombie box (slang for television) tells her how honest he is, while no one but you will tell her about Timchenko, Yakunin, and the Rotenbergs. You can knock on her door yourself, or you can send 500 rubles to local distributors — they’ll deliver the newspaper to five hundred grandmothers — or you can organize distribution yourself, inform 20,000 grandmothers, and even get elected as a local deputy by publishing stories in *PopPolitics* about how you’re taking on local crooks.
Join us. Popular Politics works.