The Influence of Political Communication in VKontakte on Electoral Behavior

The master thesis explores the relationship between the political communication of a candidate and a voter on VKontakte and electoral behavior. The relevance of the study is related to the spread of political communication practices between politicians and citizens in social media: social media allow politicians to communicate directly with voters and attract new supporters; allow Internet users to access politicians directly, bypassing the institutional constraints of traditional ways of communicating with politicians. The object of the study is the electoral behavior on VKontakte, which includes the electoral behavior of the candidate on VKontakte and the electoral behavior of the voter on VKontakte. The subject of the study is the relationship between the political communication of a candidate and a voter on VKontakte and electoral behavior. The purpose of the study is to identify the strength of the connection between political communication on VKontakte and electoral behavior. The methods of research are the collection and analysis of non-reactive data of social networks (VKontakte), statistical analysis of data in the framework of the Bayesian approach. An empirical study is devoted to the analysis of personal pages’ data of candidates for deputies on VKontakte collected during the elections to the Moscow City Duma of the VII convocation on September 8, 2019 and the preceding election campaign. The scientific and practical significance of the study lies in the fact that the results obtained - assessments of the effects of political communication on VKontakte on electoral behavior in the future can help to build models of analysis of political campaigns that take into account the Russian context. The structure of the work includes an introduction, three chapters, seven paragraphs, a conclusion, and appendices. In the introduction, relevance, problem, object and subject, goal, research objectives are identified, hypotheses are put forward and the methodology and methods of analysis are disclosed. The first chapter is devoted to studies of political communication in social media: theoretical approaches to researching the effects of media are described, studies of the behavior of politicians and voters in social networks are analyzed, and the effects discovered by researchers are indicated. The second chapter considers the research model, describes the variables necessary for the model, and reveals the basic principles of the Bayesian approach to statistical data analysis. The third chapter described data on the political communication of candidates for deputies and users of the social network and disclosed the results of testing hypotheses of the study. In conclusion, the study is summarized, the limitations of the study are identified and directions for further research are given.