The Development of Ideological Discourse Among Islamist Communities on the Social Network VKontakte
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2025.6.2743Keywords:
online radicalization, virtual radical communities, Salafism, Salafi online communities, extremism, discourse analysis, VKontakte, IslamismAbstract
The article aims to identify changes in the discourse of Islamist communities (mainly radical Salafi) on the VKontakte social network in recent years. The authors analyze how ideological attitudes are modified and acquire new forms of representation in conditions of significant restrictions in the dissemination of radical and extremist content. The study is based on monitoring data from 19 virtual Islamist communities on the VKontakte social network (collected from November 2023 to March 2024) and methodological principles of critical discourse analysis. According to Donald Holbrook's classification, the studied communities are divided into three types based on the radicality of their content (moderate, fringe, and radical). Results of the ideological discourse analysis represents characteristic and popular topics, discursive strategies for broadcasting radical ideas, and the ratio of topics with different emotional and semantic tonalities. The study shows that the moderate and part of the fringe communities are characterized by a discursive strategy of deliberately ‘blurred’ semantics of those categories and concepts that can be assessed as expressing radical ideological attitudes. In the case of radical communities, the discourse becomes more specific and intensifies, even to the point of veiled legitimization of violence. The study reveals common thematic lines and narratives related to the components of radical discourse. There is a tendency for the degree of radicalism of the discourse broadcast by Salafi communities to decrease, and for the discourse to acquire more veiled forms while maintaining a significant online audience.
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