Social integrative aspects of discursive practices of nationalist online communities

The article is dedicated to the analysis of nationalist discourse in the Internet. We consider communicative strategies of the members of virtual communities in the social network VKontakte, aimed at forming ideas of nationalism among youngsters. This paper describes the features of the nationalist discourse. It is shown that content analysis is not suitable for the detection of nationalistic rhetoric in virtual communities. The necessity of using a discursive approach in the study of nationalist discourse is substantiated by the fact that this concept gives us the opportunity to analyze the social practices of participants of virtual communities. The article presents the results of empirical research of discourse of the members of two virtual communities. The author comes to the conclusion that communication in groups is not always nationalistic. The main role in the formation and dissemination of nationalist discourse belongs to the administrator of the group. He is a media leader. All the points are illustrated by examples from the analyzed groups.