The development of public communication space of the constituent entity of the Russian Federation in terms of social media prevalence

The paper deals with the current issues of the relationship between regional authorities’ activities and the state of public communications. In the context of social media prevalence, public communications of the region move to the social network space. Based on the original research, the analysis of data from Public Opinion Foundation, Cossa, the specific content, the assessment of readiness for communication with government agencies, the consumption of the target information distributed by them, the authors argue that there is a full social request in this area. At the same time, the current state of the regional network space of public communications is characterized by the insufficient use of social media functionality to coordinate the positions and activities of stakeholders. Further expansion of the space of public communications through the integration of new information resources requires a mandatory balance between the level of its demand among users and the potential costs of creating, supporting, and promoting it within the information network of government agencies.