FORMATION OF THE INTERNET IMAGE OF RUSSIAN POLITICAL PARTIES

Abstract

The article considers the basic communication tools helping to create the Internet image of political parties as well as key components and opportunities of the Internet communications for promoting political parties and leaders in the information space. To achieve the intended effects, a political party has to tackle certain problems such as defining its behavior strategy. This strategy consists in setting the basic behavior towards civil society institutions, target groups of voters, groups of interests, authorities, rival political parties, mass media and political actors. Right strategic positioning allows a party gaining a foothold among main political actors, planning and carrying out its activities to get into the federal and regional authorities. This article analyses the usage of the official websites of political parties and party leaders, social networks, mobile applications, online media and other tools as instruments of political communication on the Internet. a comparative analysis of publications on political parties in the traditional media (television, radio, print media), Internet resources, social networks is carried out separately. The structure of publications on political parties in the Internet, media evaluation index, the ratio of focus publications (positive-negative) on the parliamentary political parties, that determine the format of the resulting image of political parties on the Internet is presented.