Social Network Communication in Ideological Communities during 2024 Presidential Elections in Russia

User-generated content makes it possible to identify social practices in ideological communities that were previously invisible to outsiders. The research objective was to check the initial hypothesis that network interaction style depends on the users’ ideological affiliation. The authors studied online communication discourse within VKontakte social network ideological communities during the presidential elections in Russia in March 7–17, 2024. The interdisciplinary research methodology involved critical discourse analysis and speech act theory. The authors developed a scale for assessing arguments in online comments according to the degree of rationality. The analysis covered 1,879 text units retrieved from 12 communities of communists, conservatives, liberals, and nationalists. The study revealed a set of distinctive features of online communication that depended on the ideological affiliation, e.g., a statistically significant correlation between the user’s argumentation techniques and the user’s community affiliation.