Potential of Political Protest of Youth in Russian Megapolises through the Prism of Communication Analysis in Vkontakte

The article highlights the results of an empirical study of 2021 on the assessment of the impact of political online communication of youth living in Russian megametropolises on political online participation and protest political actions offline. A combination of the methods used to collect information is of interest: online questionnaire of young people from Russian million-plus cities (1700 respondents, quota sampling, unrelated to the control of gender, age, level of education and city of residence) and analysis of discursive practices of politically oriented unformed communities in VKontakte, which are dominated by participants belonging to the youth of megacities (network analysis based on Big data). Research has led to the identification of 17 sustainable clusters actively discussing political issues. Each of the clusters in turn includes from several tens to hundreds of groups. Representatives of left-wing views, nationalist orientations and feminist beliefs are currently as active as possible from the point of view of online communication. At the same time, there are several separate large clusters of both left and nationalist groups that do not communicate with bearers of views. Communities with liberal views are also represented on VKontakte, their participants are more integrated into groups, the chains of connections are denser (as with carriers of feminist sentiments) than with representatives of left-wing views. Loyalists-­minded groups discuss a narrower range of problems than youth communities of the opposition-­protest constitution. An online survey of youth of megametropolises showed relatively low parameters of real protest online and offline political activity. The highest protest potential is currently observed among youth in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Kazan. This indicator of mass political sentiment of Moscow youth is slightly lower due to the quantitative balance of groups that differ in the criterion of “loyalism-­oppositionism”. At the same time, the political activation of protest-­minded youth in the next few months is highly likely.