Cross-Platform Organization of Official Communication within the Municipality’s Digital Contour: A Comparative Analysis of Balashikha and Khimki

The article is devoted to the analysis of the cross-platform organization of official municipal communication within the municipality’s digital contour. The subject of the study is the specific features of the distribution of communicative functions among the official website, the VKontakte community, and the Telegram channel, as well as the forms of cross-platform content correlation within a unified official digital contour. The study proceeds from the assumption that the official digital contour of a municipality is not a mere collection of fragmented platforms, but an internally interconnected system of official communication within which informational, service-related, and limited reactive functions are distributed in different ways. Particular attention is paid to whether different official platforms reproduce the same agenda, adapt a common information occasion to platform-specific logic, or form relatively autonomous segments of official communication. The empirical basis of the study consists of materials from the official digital platforms of two municipalities. The methodological framework of the research is based on comparative case analysis, content analysis, and cross-platform comparison of publications. The analysis was carried out using a unified coding matrix that included thematic, functional, and actor-related characteristics of publications, cross-platform status, as well as indices of service orientation, dialogicity, and civic subjectivity. The scientific novelty of the study lies in considering official municipal communication as a unified digital contour and in identifying differences among its official digital platforms through the types of cross-platform content correlation, indicators of service orientation, dialogicity, and civic subjectivity, as well as the specific features of the distribution of communicative functions. The study establishes that the official digital contour of a municipality is not reduced to the mechanical duplication of information across platforms, but rather constitutes an internally differentiated system with varying degrees of cross-platform interconnectedness. It is shown that the overlap of agendas across platforms may take the form of a full cross-platform duplicate, partial adaptation, or platform-specific content. It is also revealed that, in the cases examined, the multiplicity of official digital platforms is primarily accompanied by a redistribution of informational, service-support, and limited public-reactive functions, but does not automatically lead to an expansion of civic participation.