TY - JOUR

T1 - Low Civility and High Incivility in Russian Online Deliberation A Case of Political Talk in Vkontakte Social Network

AU - Volkovskii, Daniil

AU - Filatova, Olga

N1 - Volkovskii D., Filatova O. Low Civility and High Incivility in Russian Online Deliberation A Case of Political Talk in Vkontakte Social Network // KOME ? An International Journal of Pure Communication Inquiry Vol. 11. N1. 1. (2023). P. 95–109.

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - One of the most studied fields in deliberative research is (in)civility in Internetbased political discussions on issues of common concern. Uncivil behaviourdemonstrated by participants in online communication has various forms andnegative effects on the process and outcomes of e-deliberation as well as ondeliberators’ reactions and attitudes, which have been predominantly investigatedin Western democracies. However, this issue has been poorly covered in thecountries with less stable democratic traditions and values. This paper exploresspeech culture with a focus on civility and incivility in Russian politicalconversations conducted on Russian social media. The authors analyse mass-scaleweb political discussions on a polarising issue of the court sentence of thepolitician Alexei Navalny (2021), taking one of the most popular Russian socialnetworks VKontakte. For this study, scholars use discourse analysis based on theworks on deliberative democracy proposed by J. Habermas (1996). They concludethat Russian political speech regarding Navalny’s sentence and conducted on theVKontakte social media platform can be characterised by a great extent of uncivilspeech unbalanced by a low extent of civil speech. The conversations are notoriented towards mutual recognition or reaching a consensus, as participants areoften distracted from the main issue being discussed, and turn to interpersonaltopics instead.

AB - One of the most studied fields in deliberative research is (in)civility in Internetbased political discussions on issues of common concern. Uncivil behaviourdemonstrated by participants in online communication has various forms andnegative effects on the process and outcomes of e-deliberation as well as ondeliberators’ reactions and attitudes, which have been predominantly investigatedin Western democracies. However, this issue has been poorly covered in thecountries with less stable democratic traditions and values. This paper exploresspeech culture with a focus on civility and incivility in Russian politicalconversations conducted on Russian social media. The authors analyse mass-scaleweb political discussions on a polarising issue of the court sentence of thepolitician Alexei Navalny (2021), taking one of the most popular Russian socialnetworks VKontakte. For this study, scholars use discourse analysis based on theworks on deliberative democracy proposed by J. Habermas (1996). They concludethat Russian political speech regarding Navalny’s sentence and conducted on theVKontakte social media platform can be characterised by a great extent of uncivilspeech unbalanced by a low extent of civil speech. The conversations are notoriented towards mutual recognition or reaching a consensus, as participants areoften distracted from the main issue being discussed, and turn to interpersonaltopics instead.

KW - democratic deliberation

KW - online political speech

KW - civility

KW - incivility

KW - social media

KW - Russia

M3 - Article

VL - 11

SP - 95

EP - 109

JO - KOME

JF - KOME

SN - 2063-7330

IS - 1

ER -