Managing the Digital Space of Political Communications: Current Challenges

The intensive development of digital information and communication technologies sets new goals and objectives for society and the state: to introduce data processing tools and Internet communication algorithms into many processes, including the space of political communications. However, the use of such technologies leads to new challenges and threats: the loss of subjectivity by the state, society and human in the communication processes; the transformation of the value-semantic space; the formation of a “digital elite” that claims to become a subject of management and actually manages the communication processes. These problems raise the need to achieve the digital sovereignty of the state as a necessary condition for ensuring security. Algorithms trained on Big Data about users can control their consciousness and worldview, shape their beliefs and behavior. A person cannot distinguish who is communicating with him — a real user or an algorithm. On the one hand, a person has the freedom to be anyone on the Web. On the other hand, he loses subjectivity in communication processes. Algorithms that offer the user content in accordance with his/her beliefs and interests contribute to the formation of echo chambers in which a person’s subjective views are reinforced, and he/she is isolated from alternative points of view, which cannot contribute to consensus. These mechanisms contribute to the atomization of society, which does not allow its consolidation to be maintained. The state and its institutions need to preserve the possibility of influencing the processes of communication, political discourse management, and interpretation of information in the digital space. In this case, the state can protect the information and value-semantic space from the destructive influence of other actors who seek to control the consciousness of users. On the basis of an interdisciplinary approach using knowledge of data science and methods of structural-functional and discursive approaches, the article proposes a classification of the stages of encoding and decoding political information, which makes it possible to determine the subjects of power. In addition, the author’s approach to the definition of the digital space of political communications and digital sovereignty of the modern state is formulated in the article.

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