One of the most studied fields in deliberative research is (in)civility in Internetbased political discussions on issues of common concern. Uncivil behaviour
demonstrated by participants in online communication has various forms and
negative effects on the process and outcomes of e-deliberation as well as on
deliberators’ reactions and attitudes, which have been predominantly investigated
in Western democracies. However, this issue has been poorly covered in the
countries with less stable democratic traditions and values. This paper explores
speech culture with a focus on civility and incivility in Russian political
conversations conducted on Russian social media. The authors analyse mass-scale
web political discussions on a polarising issue of the court sentence of the
politician Alexei Navalny (2021), taking one of the most popular Russian social
networks VKontakte. For this study, scholars use discourse analysis based on the
works on deliberative democracy proposed by J. Habermas (1996). They conclude
that Russian political speech regarding Navalny’s sentence and conducted on the
VKontakte social media platform can be characterised by a great extent of uncivil
speech unbalanced by a low extent of civil speech. The conversations are not
oriented towards mutual recognition or reaching a consensus, as participants are
often distracted from the main issue being discussed, and turn to interpersonal
topics instead.