The article is devoted to an empirical study of the mechanism of demediatization in relation to a specific case the reaction of the Russian mass media and users of social networks to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta Dmitry Muratov. The concept of demediatization is defined. The concepts of administrative and narrative tracks of demediatization are introduced. Possible discursive strategies of narrative demediatization are indicated. The authors conduct empirical verification of hypotheses about the ontology and tools of local demediatization using the example of online discussions around the status of the Nobel Peace Prize 2021 and the status of nominees. The authors demonstrate the implementation of the process of demediatization in a network environment through communicative practices that are opposite to mediatization. The chronological framework of the study is from 8.10.2021 to 08.01.2022. The empirical database includes 7521 messages in 817 electronic media and posts in social networks: Vkontakte (30740), Facebook (10134) Telegram (6639) collected using the monitoring and analysis system of social networks, mass media, blogs, forums, sites with reviews Semanticforce.net. The processing of the collected material was carried out by analyzing the identified assessments of the situation in posts and comments (negative, positive, neutral) using the methods of lexico-semantic analysis.