Discursive Production of Political Meanings in the Social Media of the North Caucasus

The article, prepared as part of the implementation of state task FSRN-2025-0010 “Marking and Classification of Political Orientations of Youth in the North Caucasus in Social Media” with the support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, investigates the mechanisms of the discursive construction of political meanings in the digital space of the macro-region. Based on an interdisciplinary synthesis of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), political semiotics, and the Narrative Policy Framework, the authors reconstruct models of symbolic identification and strategies for representing youth political preferences. The empirical basis comprises a corpus of social media messages analyzed using a hybrid methodology. The phenomenon of mass political latency is deconstructed, interpreted as a strategic reservoir where routine problems are transformed into political demands through the activation of normative codes of justice. A semiotic asymmetry of discursive regimes is revealed: loyalist discourse implements a strategy of positive normalization and monopolization of the image of the future, while protest discourse relies on ethical delegitimization alongside blocked project thinking. Particular attention is paid to the phenomenon of project radicalism, which combines aggressive rhetoric with a demand for accelerated modernization. It is concluded that the political subjectivity of North Caucasus youth is formed as a dynamic system where affective regimes are primary relative to rational argumentation, and the competition of meanings unfolds within the field of temporal strategies.