Vol 23, No 1 (2021): Youth and Politics

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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.

The article examines the methodological possibilities of reinforcement theory in the field of studying the influence of Internet technologies on political behavior. The prospects of the “theory of reinforcement” are considered in the context of the changing role of Internet technologies in the political process since the beginning of the 2010s and the growing popularity of competing methodological directions, first of all, the “theory of mobilization”. It is revealed that the rivalry between the theory of reinforcement and the theory of mobilization at the present stage turns into a state of methodological dualism. Reinforcement theory not only retained its significance in the context of the growth of political mobilization in the period of the 2010s, but also received further development: the new concept of “selective avoidance” supplemented its theoretical apparatus. Reinforcement theory retains its significance for the study of political leadership among Russian youth, the activities of radical youth organizations. One of the factors in preserving the methodological potential of reinforcement theory in the study of the political activism of Russian youth is the practical combination of its principles with the network approach.

A youth audience is the most vulnerable part of society as an object of influence of radical ideas. The authors argue that the most efficient tool of involving young people of different origin and confessional affiliation into the extremist activity on the present stage is social networks. Despite the fact that the practice of using communication networks in the Internet space by terrorist organizations have existed before, it was the information policy of the ISIS (and later IS) that was characterized by the greatest effectiveness, due to the creation of an integrated media structure, which consisted of numerous foundations and agencies (“Al Furqan”, “Aynad”, “Itisaam”, “Al-Hayat”, etc.), allowing them to spread their extremist religious and ideological doctrine on a global scale. The use of the widest range of high-quality media products in Internet media and social networks has expanded the organization’s area of influence by attracting supporters not only from the Middle East region, but also from European countries and the Russian Federation. The case-study of the mechanisms for attracting European youth through social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, etc., to extremist activities under the auspices of the IS is held. In conclusion, the prospects for the influence of IS propaganda in social networks after the defeat of a terrorist organization in 2018 are assessed. As a methodological basis of the research, aspect and activity approaches, as well as analytical, statistical methods and the method of content analysis are used.

The main content of federal and regional programs for patriotic education of the citizens of the Russian Federation is targeted at work with school students, which puts emphasis on the analysis of young people opinion of these programs effectiveness. Basing on the data of the mass survey of senior school students in 10 regions of the Siberian Federal district, the article brings out their grounds for differentiating “patriot” and “non-patriot”, the comparative analysis of representations of these groups of pupils as about priority subjects of patriotic education and effective execution of its particular trends. The article has pointed out positive attitude of the majority of school students to anchoring patriotic values in youth environment through patriotic films. Young people have ambiguous attitude to the idea of compulsory patriotic education in schools and universities, and school students who do not identify themselves as patriots are negative about it. The participation of school students in patriotic events has been linked to their further self-identification as patriots. The authors emphasize that the formalized approach to working with young people leads in practice to a low level of their awareness of the content of the main directions of patriotic education, weak and not systematic involvement of schoolchildren in patriotic events and the work of patriotic associations. Based on the results of the study, the article concludes that there is a fairly large number of young people who do not share patriotic values and critically assess the effectiveness of many areas of patriotic education programs.

In 2020, the actualizing of another Government program called Patriotic education of Russian Federation citizens has been fulfilled. The main subject of the program is school students, as the Analysis of their idea of patriotism provides us with a Great chance to evaluate the effectiveness of patriotic education in Russian Federation, as well as to find the dominating idea of a citizen in minds of the Youth. In this article, based on Data coming from a mass Survey of senior school students from Siberian Federal District, we define students’ ideas of patriotism, as well as forms of behavior, acceptable for a patriot, and finally, subjects and reasons for Russian patriotism development and establishing. It was found that the idea of patriotism among school students is quite stereotypical with explicit retrospective, militaristic and imperial tendencies. There is also a correlation between patriotic identity and national identity. Thus, the school students who identify as Russians are highly patriotic, while school students with local national identity are less keen to be patriotic, according to their own words.

Modern megalopolis concentrates all groups of resources including economic, political, cultural, information, human resources, etc. The high population density, economic and geographic situation, complex multiethnic and multicultural structure of large cities contribute to certain types of values and behavioral models in the younger generation. The neo-institutional approach and social capital theory were chosen as a methodological basis. The article examines a number of methodological works devoted to various aspects of the social capital and explores the opportunity for this concept application for analysis of the protest behavior motivation and assessment of the protest potential of young people. Combination of the economic model of multilevel analysis for measuring social capital by S.А. Sysoev and socio-political parameters for the empirical part allowed to clearly defining the main categories and indicators of analysis. Measuring the levels of social capital of a megalopolis with the inclusion a network component expands the range of opportunities for assessing and identifying the protest potential of large Russian cities residents.

This article is devoted to the study of urban youth local identity in a large and medium city. This identity is manifested in everyday interaction with the urban community, its socio-political institutions and visitors and affect the level of public and political participation, the presence of constructive civic practices. The aim is to identify and describe the main components and place of local youth identity in the system of social identities in large and medium-sized cities of Krasnodar krai (Krasnodar, Novorossiysk, Sochi and Armavir). The empirical basis of the study was made up of focus group transcripts conducted with various groups of young people (schoolchildren, students, and working youth). To verify the conceptual model a modified version of the Kuhn-McPartland method was used. On the basis of the conducted empirical research, the place of local identity in the system of urban youth social and territorial identities was revealed. The dependence between the size of a city and a cohort of young people and a local identity was shown. Such components of young people local identity as awareness of the city and its socio-political life, attitude towards representatives of other communities, a sense of their involvement in city life, the desire to stay and live in the city, the will to work for the benefit of the city, to participate in its socio-political life. The study made it possible to identify the valence of youth identity (negative, neutral, positive). The trajectories of young people spatial mobility that affect the degree of actualization and valence of local identity were also described. The dependence between the strength of youth local identity and participation in public and political activity for the benefit of the city and the region, participation in the activities of public and political organizations has been revealed.

Evaluating prospects of bringing youth into Russian political elites has both an acuteness of a scientific challenge and practical relevance in the light of upcoming federal and regional elections of 2021. Based on the surveys of mass political consciousness of the youth and expert polls held in 2018-2020 in Altai Krai and Novosibirsk Oblast, the article has analyzed the visions of young people and their leaders on the effectiveness of career development through participation in youth political organizations, political parties and running for posts in election campaigns. Having measured these visions against the proportion of young people in the elite of the regional offices of political parties and in the lists of candidates running in regional elections, the authors have come to the conclusion about the low acceptance rate of career lift in regional political process. The object of the research comprises regions with different level of social and economic development, which has proved that lack of resource hinders realization of young leaders potential primarily in the regions with high concentration of economic capital and strong political competition.