Social integrative aspects of discursive practices of nationalist online comm unities

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the analysis of nationalist discourse in the Internet. We consider communicative
strategies of the members of virtual communities in the social network VKontakte, aimed
at forming ideas of nationalism among youngsters. This paper describes the features of the nationalist
discourse. It is shown that content analysis is not suitable for the detection of nationalistic rhetoric in
virtual communities. The necessity of using a discursive approach in the study of nationalist discourse
is substantiated by the fact that this concept gives us the opportunity to analyze the social practices of
participants of virtual communities. The article presents the results of empirical research of discourse
of the members of two virtual communities. The author comes to the conclusion that communication
in groups is not always nationalistic. The main role in the formation and dissemination of nationalist
discourse belongs to the administrator of the group. He is a media leader. All the points are illustrated
by examples from the analyzed groups.