Influence of Communication Strategies on the Structure of Political Discussions

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in how people interact on social media. This paper explores the influence of communication strategies for forming a public sphere and an echo chamber on the flow of political discussions on Vk.com. Using conversation analysis, we examine eight virtual communities' communication strategies, representing public institutions, media, political parties, and ideologized groups. Based on the study of 6049 comments, it is concluded that Russian virtual communities are characterized by a high level of disagreement in comments and a tendency to verbal aggression. In terms of its form, commenting has all the characteristics of a discussion. Still, in terms of the quality of the content, it is closer to exchanging text information. This type of communication imposes serious restrictions on developing communication strategies at the level of virtual communities.