REPRODUCTION OF IDEOLOGICAL BELIEFS BY SOCIAL NETWORK USERS DURING ELECTIONS

This study aimed to identify the influence of social media users’ ideological identity on the reproduction of beliefs in discourse in VKontakte communities. The theoretical and methodological foundation of this study is critical discourse analysis, particularly the socio-cognitive approach of T. A. van Dijk. A sample of 1879 posts and comments with varying ideological orientations, published between March 7 and March 17, 2024, were analyzed. From this sample, 180 messages about presidential elections were selected, revealing 29 unique ideological beliefs which usage directly correlated with users’ ideological affiliations. The findings enable a more detailed understanding how social media communities are functioning as echo chambers and provide a qualitative method for analyzing user-generated content, potentially beneficial for media policy implementation and journalistic investigations.