Digital Platforms as Subjects of Conflict Communication: Features, Effects, Risks

Abstract

Today, the media have a significant impact on most social practices and social interactions including conflict-related ones. Russian and foreign academic discourse demonstrates a sustained interest in examining the instrumental functions of digital platforms in the process of media communications accompanying a social conflict at its various stages. In contemporary conflicts, however, digital media act not only as an unbiased medium and a tool for conflict evolution, escalation or resolution, but also as an independent subject of the conflict interactions. The main purpose of this article was to describe the features of digital platforms as subjects of social conflict, as well as to systematize the effects determined by these features that affect the structural elements of conflicts, and the risks associated with them for the resolution of social contradictions. The authors describe the subjectivity of digital media in conflicts using the example of the Russian social network VKontakte. The authors found that digital platforms influence the structural components of social conflict: subject, causes, participants, and resources. The authors highlight that the implementation of the functions of digital media as subjects of conflict communications can be accompanied by an escalation and radicalization of conflicts, the polarization of the positions of its participants, as well as the suppression of alternative views on social contradictions and the emergence of new conflicts.