Application of network democracy mechanisms in local communities (based on materials from the city of Surgut, Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous okrug)

The article analyzes the influence of the network community, social media and interactive-communication platforms on the development of democratic practices of citizen participation in local self-governance. The development of interactive communication technologies has predetermined the vector of movement of many social and political phenomena, from revolutions and removal of governments to platforms for self-organization of citizens to search for missing people. In the context of the development of interactive communication technologies, the need to correctly adapt the tools of network or electronic democracy in the implementation of public political processes becomes even more important. At the same time, just as the origins of the classical understanding of democratic processes should be sought among the people, so the origins of network democracy should be sought not only at the federal level, where its potential is recognized to be enormous, but also at the level of local communities. The processes of nation-building, symbols that construct regional and federal identification find their manifestation in the basic desire of the population to participate in civic processes and join in building the construct of the future for the local community. The paper attempts to determine the role of network democracy in the formation of local communities by examining local examples in a large city in the Siberian region.