Penza, 13 June 2012. PenzaNews. The governor of the Penza Region Vasily Bochkarev took 17th place in information openness rating of heads of the regions, made by “National Service of Monitoring” together with “Institute of Independent Political Researches” in May, 2012. As news agency PenzaNews reported earlier, following the results of 2011 he took the third place and in April 2012 – 11th place.

Following the results of May, head of the Ivanovo region Mikhail Men, governor of the Kirov region Nikita Belykh and governor of Primorsky Krai Vladimir Miklushevsky got the three top positions of information openness ranking.

The governor of the Murmansk region, Marina Kovtun (Northwestern Federal District), the head of Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug Dmitry Kobylkin (Urals Federal District), the governor of Krasnodarsky Krai Alexander Tkachev (Southern Federal District), the head of Dagestan Magomedsalam Magomedov (North Caucasus Federal District) and the governor of Tomsk region Sergey Zhvachkin (Siberian Federal District) became leaders in the federal districts.

According to the head of “Institute of Independent Political Researches” Alexander Ulitin, May is special because of a number of high-profile personnel changes before the transition to direct elections of governors.

“It is noteworthy that none of the governors appointed in May, has accounts in social networks. At the same time, activeness in Twitter has allowed them to occupy leading positions in the May-media ranking. According to the number of records in the microblog in the past month, the leaders are the governor of the Kirov region Nikita Belykh (683 tweets), the head of the Ivanovo region Mikhail Men (441 tweets), the governor of Krasnodarsky Krai Alexander Tkachev (264 tweets), the head of Primorsky Krai, Vladimir Miklushevsky (247 tweets), and the governor of the Ulyanovsk region Sergey Morozov (160 tweets),” he stated.

Alexander Ulitin added that the information that had been actively discussed in the mainstream media was one of the reasons why Mikhail Men, Nikita Belykh and Vladimir Miklushevsky became the leaders.