Political communication strategies of young people in the digital space: possible outcomes[Стратегии Политической Коммуникации Молодежи В Цифровом Пространстве: Возможные Исходы]

The article defines the main strategies of political communication of Russian youth and their possible outcomes in the context of digitalization of politics. The digital space is considered by the authors as a space for young people to implement marginal (“hybrid”, virulent, nonlinear) political practices such as “black swan” (N. Taleb). The marginal political practices of young people are studied from the standpoint of anti-reductionism and anti-binarism, which makes it possible to overcome the attribution of the marginal to the abnormal, dysfunctional and peripheral. The article substantiates the idea of marginal political practices being normal, constant and trendy in the youth environment. The study has multi-methodological character, the main methods include content analysis of social media accounts, game theory and a survey of youth (18–30 years, N = 420) in various regions of the Russian Federation, including Moscow and the Moscow region, St. Petersburg, Sverdlovsk oblast, Chelyabinsk oblast, Sevastopol and Republic of Crimea, Perm Krai, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Irkutsk oblast, Omsk oblast, etc. The empirically discovered variability in the coordination between the assessment of marginal political practices (approval / censure) and the use of practices (use / refusal to use) is the basis for the author’s classification of the strategies of political communication of young people in the digital space. The implementation of these strategies may or may not be approved by the State, which may result in a political conflict. To find a balance in political communication between the state and the youth, the authors used the methods of game theory, namely, the search for balance in matrix non-coalition games. The authors proceeded from the fact that the communicants are not antagonists, i.e. they do not seek to “liquidate” each other, but, on the contrary, are aimed at obtaining a “win-win” outcome, which determined the choice of the matrix theory of non-coalition games. The results fill the gap in the knowledge about marginal political practices of young people such as Digital Natives and help to gradually shift from description of practices to trend watching and foresight as the basis for managing political conflicts to minimize their destructive effects and maximize their constructive potential.