Destructive Communication among Youth on the Internet: Socio-Political Context

The paper presents the general results of the study of destructive behaviour of young people in web communities. At the first stages of the study the aim was to identify destructive communication practices among young people on the Internet, including in the context of political discourse. At the final stage the aim was to identify strategies and techniques in the news content that can form and provoke destructive patterns of users’ responses to various socio-political phenomena (events, decisions and persons associated with these events). 
The study included a total of 530 respondents — representatives of student youth from va­rious universities in Tomsk. The empirical material of the study also included regional news reports on socio-political topics, posted in free access by various communities on VK social network (in Tomsk and Novosibirsk). We analyzed 3,786 posts from Novosibirsk and 887 from Tomsk. For data analysis the authors used qualitative method (content analysis, topic analysis, psycholinguistic analysis, psychological analysis, machine learning methods) and quantitative method (API-based data mining algorithm, digital footprint data collection using data platform (https://lk.data.tsu.ru/), natural language processing methods for text analysis and information extraction, machine learning methods, PolyAnalyst text analysis platform). Within the scope of the project the authors studied the specifics of perception and consumption of political content on social media and identified destructive behaviour among young people in web communities.