Criteria of Conflictogenic World-Modeling in Anonymous Political Discourse of Telegram

The rapid growth of unverified Telegram communities raising issues of conflict between Russian citizens and representatives of other cultures who come to our country to work makes research into the mechanisms of conflict-generating world modeling relevant. The objective of the research is to systematize the criteria for conflictogenic world-modeling, taking into account the complex nature of the social problem. The sample consists of posts published throughout 2024 on two Telegram channels with more than 200 thousand subscribers, retrieved from the “Politics” category. The main methods are Discourse analysis, Contextual analysis, and Case study method. The conflictogenic world-modeling reveals ideological contradictions between the dominant ethnic groups (Russians) and the non-dominant groups of ethnophores (Tajiks, Uzbeks, Kirghiz, Turkmens, Azerbaijanis, Armenians) and the crisis of the intercultural relations, caused by the influx of labor migrants into Russia. It is argued that the criteria of conflictogenic world-modeling draw on three types of factors: the complex nature of labor migration processes and the interethnic conflicts; the affordances of the Internet-mediated Telegram communication, and the specifics of the digital language. The socio-psychological and legal factors determine the regulatory and subject-object criteria. The format of the Telegram discourse foregrounds the hypertext criterion and the multimodal criterion. The language, used by the moderators, determines the frequency criterion, the semantic and stylistic criterion, the ethical-speech criterion, the metatextual criterion. The research prospects include the development of the methods for identifying conflictogenic world-models in the digital environment for the timely prevention and constructive resolution of the interethnic conflicts.