Stratagemic and Tactical Variation in Conflictogenic Network Discourse: Glocalization of Value Space

Abstract

This article offers an examination of the use of conflictogenic communication tactics as well as the situational determination of their implementation in comments posted in social networks in the Republic of Dagestan (Russia) and in the Stavropol Region (Russia). The authors employ contextual and semantic analysis to identify conflictogens as units of hostility language and pejoratives; discourse and modus analysis is used to identify the most common and effective communication tactics. Speech techniques are identified that implement a strategy of negative positioning of socio-cultural identity foundations, and provoking ethnic and confessional conflicts. The main conditions for the development and spread of a conflictogenic network discourse include depersonalization, prompt presentation and circulation of information, openness to information supply, as well as a high degree of speech expression. The conflictogenic topics in both regions under consideration demonstrate the maximum ethno-confessional determination. In both regions, there is an obvious prevalence of communication tactics of separation and negative presentation. Negative points of view were expressed through pejoratives, ethnopholisms and obscene vocabulary. The tactics of appeal and conflict mobilization were employed on a less frequent basis, whereas the mechanism behind their implementation mostly involved hints. The modification of value settings in some cases leads to a radical change in the positivization and negativization poles of nuclear global axiologems through the process of discursive territorial and topical determination of content. The analysis of the empirical material helped detect statements containing invitations – both implicit and explicit: appeals, slogans, commitative constructions, etc. The social networks in the modern media space are getting effective in conflict mobilization, offering more and more ways to use conflictogenic communication tactics, to produce and circulate destructive contents.

Keywords

• conflictogenicity of network discourse
• stratagemic and tactical variation
• ethno-confessional conflict
• glocalization of community axiosphere
• discursive territorial determination
• functional and pragmatic load of suggestive tactics