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DISCOURSES OF THE URBAN COMMUNITY OF INTERNET MEMES: BETWEEN CONSTRUCTIVE AND DESTRUCTIVE CIVIC ACTIVITY OF THE YOUTH // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 3 (25). P. 136-155

Internet sites are an additional space of uniting by interests, a place for upholding rights and freedoms. They are becoming more popular for social activism manifestations. Conflicting, destructive interactions in the formats of trolling, fail, and flame are observed in social networks within the seeming freedom of the Internet. A popular way for young people to present their sociopolitical views is the Internet meme: a visual-verbal means of mass communication, a tool for activation, a translator of emotions. The aim of this study is to analyze the visual-discursive features of the information content of the youth regional community “Memes about Native Saratov” posted on the social network VKontakte. “Memes about Native Saratov” is a group of sociopolitical “digital folklore”, the main content of which is Internet memes and their discussion. The criteria for choosing the “Memes about Native Saratov” group were: openness of the official regional Internet community; daily updates with new content; availability of sociopolitical content; publications with radical, rude, aggressive destructive content; quantitative and demographic characteristics. This Internet community has a significant number of young subscribers in Saratov Oblast. The members of the community, jokingly and seriously, draw sociopolitical images of the urban environment, criticize the indifference of the power structures of the region and Russia, the inaction of utility service providers, or the indifference of the city dwellers. The consistently solved research problems were focused on the collection and interpretation of discursive data using the methodology of qualitative and quantitative content analysis. The results of the analysis of three topics indicating the community’s semantic field—“Authorities Serving the People”, “Communal Lawlessness”, “Center–Periphery: ‘Russian sorrows’ ”—are presented in the article. The field included 125 memes. The authors’ understanding of the content of a constructive and destructive civic orientation is formulated in the article. Based on the score ranking, the rating of youth activity within the selected topics of the semantic field of the community for the period of 2019 was compiled. The general episodes and the specifics of discursive content, its destructiveness in Internet memes of various semiotic structures and comments on memes in each thematic area of the “Memes about Native Saratov” community were determined. The tendencies observed in the civic discourses of the youth are revealed, the prospects of manifestations of youth citizenship in the urban Internet community are identified. The study allowed the authors to present the specifics of the content of each thematic area identified within the “Memes about Native Saratov” Internet community, with a focus on the analysis of destructiveness, the discursive features of its content.

Keywords: urban Internet community, youth, civic activity, destructive content, constructive content, memes, visual-discursive content, content analysis