Social Media as a Mechanism for the Formation of the Image of the Modern State in the Political Consciousness of Russians

The purpose of the article is to study the specifics of social media as a mechanism for forming the image of the modern Russian state. On the basis of psychosemantic methods, content analysis of text messages of social media, the values and ideas developed in the communicative space of social media, their projections in the image of the state are explored. The peculiarities of citizens’ perception of political objects in the context of the network logic of the organization of information exchange are revealed. The conducted research allowed identifying the main thematic groups of associations (verbal and visual), representing a sample of Russian political consciousness as well as concluding that materialist values prevail in the image structure of the modern Russian state, the destruction of sacred ideas about power, the state as a result of the transformation of modern communicative space. The article uses the author’s redaction of the concept of “network image” as a set of knowledge, ideas, and assessments about the state, which are formed in the minds of the Internet users as a result of their interaction on social media sites. In conclusion, the proposals and recommendations for overcoming the critical perception of the modern Russian state are formulated, taking into account the main trends in the development of the communicative space of social media.