Comunicación política en la red social Facebook: segmento rusoparlante/ Political Communication on Facebook: Russian Case

Introduction. Features of political communication in Russian-speaking segment of the Facebook network are analyzed in the article. According to researchers unlike their counterparts in the U.S. and elsewhere, Russian bloggers prefer platforms that combine features typical of blogs with features of social network services like Facebook. The data were collected into a complicated political period (violent events in Ukraine), which is considerably stimulated the activity of the Russian opposition and manipulative processes in the Russian social networks. Objectives. The objectives were: classification of actors in the political groups in the Russian-speaking segment of Facebook and analysis of their sociolinguistic behavior. Method. The interdisciplinary analysis based on scope of politically active groups (N 200) and actors (N 291) during January - May, 2014. Results. Actors were classified by politic opinions into mainstream, oppositional and nationalist Clusters and based on network activity into designers of communication space, manipulators, graphomaniacs and local cluster authors. Their communicative and speech behavior was also analyzed and shown shaped specific virtual identities, which demonstrate distinguished sociolinguistic behavior. Discussion and Conclusion. Today the analysis of communication processes in politically active communities in the network environment is of great importance as the virtual sphere becomes more and more significant for achieve of various political aims both in Russia and around the world. The prospect of an actual study is to identify the ratio of online and off-line communication activity of actors in the political sphere in the Russian segment of Facebook.