Information Capsules as a Structural Component of Contemporary Political Internet Communication

In the context of the intensive development of the Internet as a space of mass political communications, the problem of the applicability of classical models of political communication to information and communication online processes becomes urgent. The significant substantive and functional differences between the traditional offline space and the contemporary network space, as well as the corresponding differences between the phenomena of offline and online masses, shown in this article, lead us to the conclusion that it is necessary to revise the explanatory potential of classical communication models and adapt them to network space. To form communication models adequate to the contemporary conditions and the functioning of the Internet, the authors consider such a structural component of political communications in the network space as information capsules. This concept refers to an information and communication structure, within which ideas, symbols, meanings, beliefs, opinions circulating in its closed space do not change due to a critical understanding of information and the perception of alternative explanatory models, but, on the contrary, they are only preserved, self-supported, fixed and even amplified by multiple repetitions, discussion, approval among like-minded people. The work shows that most online resources (news feeds on social media, network communities, search services) have characteristics that allow them to be classified as information capsules. The authors analyze the conditions for maintaining the stability of such information capsules, which are necessary for the implementation of mass political communication in the Internet space. The work concludes that, at the macro level, most of the processes of mass political communication on the Internet can be reduced to the following: various political actors form and maintain the stable functioning of their own information capsules, necessary for the transmission of certain political meanings, ideas and values; they also transform and destroy similar information capsules of political opponents, which fits into the logic of the system of contemporary information warfare.

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