Pandemic Discussions in VKontakte: Hopes and Fears

摘要

The article is devoted to the reaction of the Russian-speaking audience to news reports about the pandemic in large news groups on the VKontakte platform. Based on five scenarios for the development of discussions, the authors qualitatively researched the messages and comments to them in 30 groups devoted to the local agenda of 10 different Russian regions. The found trends were confirmed by experts from these regions. As a theoretical premise, we used the texts of classic media researchers of our time (such as Jaron Lanier, Geert Lovink and John Keane) and an analysis of how emotions, such as fear and hope, actually manifest themselves in social networks during pandemic. We also used our previous work to reflect the specifics of the Russian-speaking social media ecosystem. The study shows that in both April and November, the dominant scenarios remained the Utopian, denying the presence of the virus or its danger, and the realistic scenarios. At the same time, the decrease in general interest in the pandemic agenda did not affect the fact that the emotional context of its discussion became more positive.