Verbal aggression in social media comments and monitoring of social tension (as exemplified by comments in @kuzbass_news )

Falomkina Irina P.

In the article, comments of Instagram users are analyzed from the point of view of aggressive behavior, which, in opinion of the author, on the one hand can be explained by the specifics of communication in Internet, which is deprived of a whole number of communication restrictions, by the virtual nature of communication and anonymity, and on the other hand is a marker of social tension: the level of verbal aggression is directly dependent on the level of interest to the content of a publication, and that means on the significance of the event covered in the text for the commentator. Most emotional topics for Kuzbass region population in the period from 1 March, 2019 until 1 March, 2020 were the bad environmental situation, mass migration of people from the region, low level of the population’s income, and the irrational distribution of the local budget. The work touches upon the subject of the genre specifics of internet comment, the phenomenon of verbal aggression is defined, and the issue of reasons for its occurrence is risen; addressees of verbal aggression are identified, explicit and implicit ways of manifestation of verbal aggression are studied at different linguistic levels (lexical, grammatical, graphical means), oppositions “people-the government”, “the poor-the rich”, “the center-the province”, and “the locals-the migrants” actualized in verbal comments are described. At the end of the article, prospects of further study are delineated, which may include the analysis of the semantic uncertainty of texts published in regional media which give rise to conflicts.

Keywords:internet comment, social media, verbal aggression, social tension, ways of manifestation of verbal aggression