Representation of the Moscow districts in local internet communities on the VK social network

Section: New Media

Social media serve not only as platforms for discussing pressing issues, exchanging opinions, and informing, but also as avenues for representing urban areas. The content (posts and comments) of urban Internet communities contains linguistic markers that reveal how communicators describe and interpret the local characteristics of their districts. This study delves into the peculiarities of how metropolitan districts are represented in the content of Moscow communities on the VK social network. The authors conducted a corpus analysis of a diverse range of records and comments on public pages and groups representing six Moscow districts that vary in socio-economic characteristics. The findings reveal that the dominant semantic components of Moscow district representation primarily focus on territorial features and behavioral aspects of life within the district. Interestingly, the communities of Moscow’s post-industrial cluster emphasize cultural identity as a significant aspect of representation. Moreover, the nature of neighborhood representation varies depending on the type of Internet community (managed publics or groups primarily controlled by subscribers). This distinction influences not only the thematic focus but also the content and meaning of the content shared on these social media platforms.

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To cite this article: Tikhonova I. A., Kozhemyakin E. A. (2025) Reprezentatsiya rayonov Moskvy v territorial’nykh internet-soobshchestvakh v sotsial’noy seti «VKontakte» [Representation of the Moscow districts in local internet communities on the VK social network]. Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta. Seriya 10. Zhurnalistika 2: 33–56. DOI: 10.55959/msu.vestnik.journ.2.2025.3356