Personification as a Communication Strategy in Digital Society

In recent decades, the political game in democratic societies has become increasingly personalized. The role of political parties as representatives of public interests is gradually weakening, which is facilitated by the growing importance of social media. Personalization, as a strategy of political communication, manifests itself during the period of election campaigns, since the electorate chooses specific politicians based on their image recreated in the media. The purpose of this article is to test the hypothesis about the increasing role of social media and the personification of the political game during election campaigns. The research methods include analysis of bibliographic sources and content analysis. The authors studied the profiles from the social network VKontakte belonging to some candidates for deputies of St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, nominated by the electoral association "St. Petersburg regional branch of the All-Russian party "Unity and Fatherland" - "United Russia". Based on the analysis of the content from the profiles on the social network, the hypothesis we had put forward about the increasing role of media during the election campaigns was not confirmed. The authors conclude that political competition is a key factor in the personification of political discourse in mass media. It is shown that, if there is no political competition, politicians lose incentives to disclose personalized information and form a positive image of their personality in social media. The practical significance of the work for representatives of the political community lies in the fact that at present, in order to increase public loyalty to the dominant party and trust in the political activities of public leaders, politicians at all levels of government need to conduct a competent policy in social networks, based on the experience of leading democratic countries.