Mass consciousness manifestation in the online political discourse

The author proves that users' comments in the Runet political segment are produced under the influence of mass consciousness. The analysis has shown that the main differential characteristics of the discourse under consideration are as follows: the increased affection and decreased rationality; anonymity and lessened sense of users' personal responsibility; mosaic, indistinct and fragmentary ideological attitudes of communicants; stereotypes of social and political reality in the country and impersonality of the produced verbal structures, as well as the dynamism and variability of the expressed ideologemes. The opposition-minded Runet users are united in a mass with a sense of hostility toward the government and its supporters, which they express in their comments. The communicants frequently use negative, sometimes invective, vocabulary, they regularly break ethical standards and the law, manifest stereotypes and take no notice of ideological differences between political groups.