The Communicative Potential of Internet Commentary at the System of Public Relations (Macedonian-Albanian case)

Sorokin Danila Alekseevich ORCID: 0000-0001-6792-4409 PhD in Politics Associate Professor, Department of Journalism and Television Technologies Russian State University named after A.N. Kosygina 119071, Russia, Moscow, Malaya Kaluzhskaya str., 1 sorokin-da@rguk.ru

introduction

The beginning of the XXI century marked a qualitatively new stage in the development of mass communication. Traditional elements of the structure of social interaction have been supplemented by new Internet sites that offer consumers certain previously absent amenities, expressed by mobility. Their application leads to a reduction in the distance of interaction on the principle of "man-man", "man-society", "man-space", "citizen-power", etc. At the same time, the information consumer himself can not only convey the information to the counterparty in a timely manner, but also respond promptly to it, become a co-author of the material, leaving his comment to it. In this case, co-authorship is indicated as an element in the formation of a holistic perception of the material among subsequent readers/users, thereby, to a certain extent, forming public opinion ^[1]. A considerable number of scientific papers have been devoted to the study of genre features of media materials on the Internet, the specifics of their language, electronic communication in general and Internet commentary in particular ^{[2, 3, 4]}. Despite the commonality of scientific approaches, it was not possible to identify an established interpretation of the concept of Internet comment. Within the framework of this material, we define IC as a network verbal-nonverbal utterance characterized by secondary nature in relation to the original stimulus, having a polylogical, asynchronous nature and often having an evaluative judgment ^{[5, 6]}. The latter component is of particular interest. 

MATERIAL AND METHODS OF RESEARCH

The article proposes to focus on the analysis of a particular case of social media content. The subject of interest was the Internet comments of users in relation to representatives of the Albanian ethnic minority of the Republic of North Macedonia. The interactions of representatives of two major ethnic groups throughout the modern history of Macedonia are a complex issue of political communication. The main research method is qualitative and quantitative content analysis of verbal comments left by users to Macedonian media information messages on social media pages. It is assumed that an Internet comment, being, in fact, a private opinion, with a certain set of similar statements, may reflect a trend in issues and topics of concern to society.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Macedonia is one of the countries of the Balkan peninsula, formed after the collapse of Yugoslavia. Small, in terms of geography and population, the state is ethnically heterogeneous. According to the population census conducted by the State Statistical Office in 2021, out of the total number of people living in Macedonia, 54.21% called themselves Macedonians, 29.52% Albanians, 3.98% Turks, 2.34% Gypsies, 1.18% Serbs, 0.87% Bosniaks and 0.44% Vlachs ^[7].

Albanians, who make up almost a third of the country's population, have been fighting for recognition (along with Macedonians) as a constituent nation since Macedonia gained independence. During the first decade of the existence of the independent Macedonian State, the number of Macedonian Albanians steadily increased. The reason for this is not only the active reproduction of this population group, but also a significant number of migrants from neighboring Albania and displaced persons from Kosovo, corroded at that time by the interethnic conflict, which has not yet been resolved. The rapid increase in the number of Macedonian Albanians and the radicalization of their views under the influence of the clashes in Kosovo led to the aggravation of internal contradictions between the Albanian minority of the Republic and the central government ^[8]. 2001 went down in the history of Macedonia as the year of the Albanian-Macedonian armed interethnic conflict, which was completed under the onslaught of the international community with significant concessions to the Albanian side, fixed by the Ohrid Treaty ^[9]. Among the privileges they received: an increase in the representation of the Albanian population in government bodies, the transformation of the educational and cultural component of public life, etc. For example, Albanian-language universities, mass media, cultural institutions, etc. have appeared in Macedonia. Despite the twenty-year period of peaceful coexistence of two large ethnic groups within a small Macedonian state, contradictions between representatives of the Macedonian and Albanian ethnic groups both in the political sphere and in the public sphere to some extent persist ^[10].  

One of the clearest manifestations of interethnic rejection with the advent of the public Internet and the development of new means of communication is the space of social networks. It is worth noting that in the Republic of North Macedonia, the possibility of using Internet communication first appeared in 1995. Since that time, the number of households connected to the network has been increasing annually. So, for example, in 2012 there were 58.3% of them, 3 years later – almost 11% more in 2015, and according to the results of monitoring in 2022, the number of connected subscribers increased by a third compared to data from 10 years ago, to 86.6% ^[11]. User activity grew accordingly. For example, in January 2022, there were 1.75 million Internet users in Northern Macedonia, most of whom were also users of social networks. In total, according to the analytical report of the DataReportal database, their number in Northern Macedonia at the beginning of 2022 was 64.8% of the total population. (However, it is worth mentioning here that not every user of the social network is equal to a person / citizen of the country, but even taking into account this reservation, such a number is seen as significant).

Among the most popular social platforms, there are several, these are: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Istagram, etc. Instagram Facebook and Meta Platforms are recognized as extremist and banned in Russia. It is worth noting that the activities of Meta Platforms, Facebook and Instagram, are recognized in Russia and banned. According to activity monitoring, the number of users of social networks increases annually. So, if in January 2019 there were 1,087,000 of them in Macedonia, which was 51.8% of the total population, then in January 2022 this number increased by more than 300 thousand. And numbered up to 1,435,100, which was already 68.4% of the country's inhabitants ^[12]. A similar picture is observed in the construct of interaction of elements of civil society. About 80% of public and state organizations have accounts in social networks, and Macedonian researchers and journalists note the convenience of building communications and distributing information on these platforms ^[13].

At the same time, the Macedonian segment of social networks also concentrates a large amount of destructive content, which is confirmed by the data of the Internet service govornaomraza ^[14]. The platform accumulates cases of public space where there are hateful statements against a person or community based on the principle of gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, linguistic, national, political, and other identifications. The Internet service receives messages that are submitted by people anonymously. After the verification procedure for the specified material by the Union of Journalists of Macedonia or the Agency for Audiovisual Services, verification can be initiated both in relation to the individual or collective user who distributed the material, and in relation to the platform on which it was posted. It is worth noting that the information space is practically unlimited, it includes both traditional mass media and new media; both public event venues and private statements. The forms of dissemination of hate materials studied by the platform are not limited either, both written and oral speech, as well as any non-verbal content that can be accessible to a wide range of people can be included here.

The analysis of verbal materials concentrated on the platform shows that during the period from 2013, when the data collection project began, to the beginning of 2023, in the information space of Northern Macedonia, the residents of the country themselves initiated checks against almost 2,000 publications that could contain derogatory statements towards other users. Of the total array of published materials, the largest part touches on issues of ethnicity, this is about 50% of statements. While, for example, the topics of racial, religious hostility or hateful sayings on issues of social origin and status together occupy less than 15% of the total number of messages.

During the monitoring of statements based on ethnic identity, it was found that many of them were left in accounts belonging to the media or replicating their materials. Active discussions were held in the public pages of the Infomax news agency, Focus online publications, Vecer, Sitel and AlfaTelevizija TV channels, etc. So, in 2020 alone, more than one and a half hundred evaluative statements of a negative nature were identified in discussions of Macedonian media news reports.

It is noteworthy that most of them are statements against Albanians, often derogatory "terrorists", "idiots" are applied to them, many users in the comments allow obscene vocabulary, as well as the disparaging "shiptari". The latter, despite the fact that it is used in some publications as a demonym, causes hostility of the Albanian population of Macedonia, ranging from everyday disagreements, ending with political slogans and public demonstrations. One of the cases was widely replicated in the local press. The encyclopedia published by the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, in which shiptari was used as a synonym for the ethnonym Albanians, provoked protests by political forces representing the interests of the Albanian population of the country and demonstrations by Albanians themselves demanding that the book be withdrawn from sale and the publication itself destroyed. So, people write about Albanians, for example, discussing the statement of the chairman of the Parliament of the country Jaferi (an ethnic Albanian) about the postponement of the census, quoted by the Informax agency, or the message of the Sitel TV channel about plagiarism in the scientific works of the University in Tetovo, where not only they express a negative attitude towards the situation and heroes, but also the first in Macedonia The Albanian-speaking university is called a factory for the production of unskilled workers who will be accepted under a quota to fulfill state obligations. In the comments to the news about the installation of a memorial plaque and the laying of flowers in memory of the liberation of Tetovskaya Kale in March 2001, Albanians are unflatteringly compared to animals. Fierce negativity is also heard in discussions of news reports from various media outlets on the "Monster" case related to the murder of five Macedonians on Easter 2012 in the suburbs of the capital Skopje, where Albanians were the suspects, one of the many statements is "A good Shiptar is a dead Shiptar."

conclusions

There are more than a dozen similar examples of verbal comments in the Macedonian segment of social networks. It is unequivocal that all of them are evaluative, illustrate a hateful attitude towards representatives of the Albanian ethnic group and represent special cases. However, as it seems, they reflect a dangerous trend: the number of messages based on ethnic identification is many times more than others. The left negative comments become a kind of marker indicating not only the incompleteness of the conflict, but also the phase of its frustration, which manifests itself in group feelings of irritation, anger and tension, becoming visible to members of society and "breaking out" in various forms ^[15]. One of these forms is the presence of derogatory group characteristics in society, which we observe in verbal comments left by users about information messages in Macedonian media accounts and not only.  

Taking into account the rather aggressive rhetoric of Macedonian users, and the ethnic conflict existing in the history of Macedonian statehood, it is worth noting that the Albanian-Macedonian conflict "lives" and not only in the language of users of social networks, which are extremely popular with a youth audience far from consuming information from traditional media.

The analysis, on the one hand, suggests that the comments left on social networks have a significant destructive potential, within the framework of the described case, using the possibilities of which, under certain concomitant "favorable" socio-economic and political conditions, there is a possibility of a new round of conflict. At the same time, on the other hand, the presence for a long time of a significant number of user statements (Internet comments) with negative attitudes towards representatives of the Albanian ethnic minority and the absence of a transition of the conflict from the verbal stage to action may signal (to some extent) constructive potency. In other words, the space of social networks becomes a kind of substitute in relation to the physical, real space, which makes it possible to keep a possible conflict at the level of rejection in Internet comments, preventing it from "going outside", developing into a "hot" phase, which the Republic of Macedonia managed to cope with in 2001.

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