Role and Features of Youth Political Online Activism in Modern Russia

The presented article is a study dealing with the role and characteristics of youth political online activism in modern Russia. The relevance, main aspects and criteria of the effectiveness of youth policy in the field of communication are considered. There are following basic steps suggested: to improve the effectiveness of such communication associated with a clear articulation of the needs of various groups of people through competent socio-political monitoring with independent quantitative and qualitative research. Building a constructive dialogue to promote positive, constructive and conventional activation of the political behavior of youth groups; work to overcome the apolitical and absentee tendencies of young people, as well as the expansion of the political and managerial concept of “Electronic state” not only formally, but also substantively, are among these steps. Further, the study analyzes the structure of protest behavior, distinguishes several levels of protest consideration, each of which has its own specifics and features for the analysis. This is the level of deep reasons and specific motive for the emergence of a public protest; the level of the dominant style of public manifestation of any protest moods, which has its basis in the predominantly psycho-emotional sphere; and, finally, the level of peculiarities of political behavior with very specific tactics and strategies of protest behavior. It draws attention to the fact that youth as a social group is heterogeneous and it seems appropriate to divide its age structure into three stages (from 14 to 20, years old, from 21 to 24 years old, and from 25 to 30 years old). The final part of the article deals with the models of virtual protest behavior. The model of a complete unstructured protest is highlighted; activity-target co-optation; proactive-loyalist; adaptation and frustration; politicized civil and local models. The results obtained to date make it possible to record the essential features of online mobilization, both based on the features of the functioning of the virtual space, and from the point of view of the main object of research: youth and the specifics of its identity and algorithms of political behavior. All this allows us to speak about the relevance of the constructed classification models for various mobilization mechanisms, which determines the practical significance of the study.