The paper examines the features of political elite communication in the Internet space. Based on the studies of V. Pareto, G. Lakoff, R. Koopmans, N. Ponomarev, P. Tarusin and on the frame analysis technique, the authors discover the following contradiction that has been developed in Russian political environment and reveal the causes. The innovativeness of communication channels and forms should have helped speed up the process of legitimizing the counter-elites, in reality, the use of digital communication is often seen by electorate as a kind of formal or game element that replaces the essence of real problems.