Deformation of genre: writer's diary in internet culture

The paper examines modifications of the genre of the writer's diary of the literary site Proza.ru. The relevance of the paper is due to the need to study the genre, which is being displaced by blogs in the context of Internet culture and to understand the mechanisms of deformation as an adaptation to a technologically changed context. The study combines the methodology of structural-semiotic, narrative-psychological, and analytical approaches that help to distinguish the canonical diary with its autotherapeutic nature and its genre modifications. Among the latter, such variants as topical diary reflections, philosophical reflections, quotation-type diaries, and ironic quatrains were found. Variants of diary in many cases perform the function of the writer’s artistic laboratory. Seemingly old-fashioned, the genre of diary is getting adapted and is developing on Proza.ru at the background of the blogs’ active evolution in social networks. The prospects for further research include examining the “cross-cutting diary discourse” of several chronological layers and comparing it with synchronous printed writers’ diaries, as well as a more in-depth stylistic analysis of individual writers’ diaries.