Information security and society consolidation in the context of the Benedict Anderson’s concept of the imagined community

The author of the article rethinks the concept of an imagined community proposed by Benedict Anderson, believing that the work, which became classic and was first published in 1983, acquires a new relevance today. Raising the issue of the nation as an imagined community is especially relevant in the context of the exceptional importance that the mass media and social media have now acquired as agents of political transformation, political mobilization and instruments of struggle for people's consciousness. For the multinational Russian Federation, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of understanding the impact of information technology on mass consciousness and collective identity. Especially in conditions when imagined nationalist narratives arise literally before our eyes, including in states located along the perimeters of the Russian borders, whose territories were once part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.