DOI

Wide use of Internet on the territory of the Russian Federation and, in particular, Web 2.0 technology development, promote the expansion of the number of Internet users among Russian citizens. Most of them have personal profiles in social networks (e.g. VKontakte, Facebook, Instagram) and make the audience of numerous public groups (or “publics”), virtual communities of different thematic focuses. Groups allow users to share political information and discuss burning issues. It is noteworthy that social networks users could act in various ways: create their own content or retransmit ideas of the others by making reposts. The study examined two types of virtual communities of well-known Russian network “VKontakte”: 1) pages of official authorities; 2) communities for discussion of politics (the five most popular). Content (including comments and discussions) and personal profiles of the most active participants (150 units at all) were studied. The study conducted through N. Fairclough’s interpretation of critical discourse-analysis found that: 1) the main focus of pages of official authorities is spreading of official information and monitoring in the society that allows authorities to respond quickly on critical situations, while public have an opportunity to convey demands to officials; 2) social networks act as a place or forum for public dialogue on political issues and allow ordinary citizens not just “chill out”, but also create an illusion of possibility for each person to influence policy; 3) activity in virtual political communities does not correlate with quantity of the reposts from these communities to users’ personal profiles; moreover, it does not correlate with users’ positioning as an active participant of political discussions in front of his or her followers.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the International Conference on Internet and Modern Society, IMS 2017
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages189-194
Number of pages6
VolumePart F133135
ISBN (Electronic)9781450354370
DOIs
StatePublished - 21 Jun 2017
Event2017 International Conference on Internet and Modern Society, IMS 2017: международная объединенная конференция - Университет ИТМО, Санкт-Петербург, Russian Federation
Duration: 21 Jun 201723 Jun 2017
Conference number: XX
http://icims.ifmo.ru/
http://ims.ifmo.ru/ru/pages/28/IMS_2017.htm

Conference

Conference2017 International Conference on Internet and Modern Society, IMS 2017
Abbreviated titleIMS 2017
Country/TerritoryRussian Federation
CityСанкт-Петербург
Period21/06/1723/06/17
Internet address

    Scopus subject areas

  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
  • Software

    Research areas

  • Political Participation, Public Dialogue, Public Policy, Social Networks, Virtual Political Communities, Vkontakte

ID: 13941371