The specifics of public authorities' communications in social networks on the example of using the remote electronic voting system in the presidential elections of the Russian Federation in 2024

Kuz'min Aleksei Evgen'evich ORCID: 0000-0001-8007-7232 Associate Professor; Department of State and Municipal Management; Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration 199178, Russia, Saint Petersburg, ul. Sredny Pr. Vasilyevsky, 57/43 alkuzmino@yandex.ru Kul'nazarova Anastasiya Vital'evna ORCID: 0000-0003-3858-995X PhD in Politics Associate Professor; Department of Social and Political Sciences; St. Petersburg State University of Telecommunications named after Prof. M.A. Bonch-Bruevich 193232, Russia, Saint Petersburg, 22 Bolshevikov Ave., room 335/1 avkulnazarova@gmail.com

Enikeeva Ekaterina Mihailovna ORCID: 0000-0003-4946-9697 Assistant; Department of Social and Political Sciences; St. Petersburg State University of Telecommunications named after Prof. M.A. Bonch-Bruevich 193232, Russia, Saint Petersburg, 22 Bolshevikov Ave., room 335/1 gf@sut.ru

The problems and relevance of the study

The 21st century is characterized by significant quantitative and qualitative changes in the media field, which led to the mediatization of public life. This process also includes the transformation of the socio-political sphere, closely intertwined with the media field. The modern political and legal culture of the Russian Federation implies a "power-society" dialogue, which is confirmed by the launch in 2014 by the Russian Government of the Open State project aimed at qualitatively changing the level of information openness of departments (filling official websites with regulatory documents, maintaining social networks of almost all government structures, interacting with users via the Internet, etc.). The transfer of dialogue to the digital space forms not only a new environment for public communications, but also provokes new conflict interactions.

Digital technologies are in demand, in particular, in the electoral process — primarily due to their convenience. In the perspective of the next decade, the remote electronic voting system (DEG) will affect all regions of the Russian Federation. Today, the system needs to form a stable positive image and reputation that inspires the trust of citizens. In this regard, there is a need to monitor and analyze public opinion regarding the DEG system ^[5]. Despite the high technological stability of the system, due to the functioning of the DEG, as with any complex Internet service, problematic situations periodically arise that are reflected in the digital space of social networks. According to M. N. Grachev, mediatization provokes conflict situations and leads to an increase in the degree of conflictogenicity of the socio-political sphere ^[4]. A. N. Chumikov ^[16] introduces the concept of "conflict communications", which means "socio-psychological interaction based on disagreement between the two sides on any issue, divergence of views, opinions" ^[11], "the struggle of both positive and negative assessments, that is, the establishment of a negative emotional and evaluative relationship between the speaker and the listener, despite which the speaker achieves the goal" ^[9], "the manifestation of disharmony in communication with a positive outcome" ^[7], "a natural interpersonal process based on contradictions in the values, norms, interests and needs of opponents" ^[2]. In a number of studies, conflict communication appears to be a negative phenomenon that must be overcome ^[13], moreover, it is "one of the main reasons that often endanger the security of a person, society and the state" ^[15]. Some researchers associate conflict communication with a "joint search for solutions to contradictions" ^[3] aimed at improving the effectiveness of interaction ^[12]. The authors of this article consider conflict communications as a communication interaction related to the joint search for solutions to contradictions. In this case, with the use of effective communication technologies, the conflict can be resolved, otherwise, the conflict situation may escalate.

Research interest in conflict communications in social networks in the context of the use of DEG systems is due to several reasons: firstly, in 2024, the system was used for the first time on such a significant geographical scale during the presidential election, which is why the state faces the task of raising awareness and loyalty to the system; secondly, in the context of modern information warfare, fake publications aimed at discrediting the DEG system are not excluded. When carrying out communications on social networks, it is important to take this aspect into account and promptly respond to fake information in a neutralizing way.

Research methodology.

The object of the study was communication in social networks related to the resolution of conflict issues regarding the functioning of the remote electronic voting system. The subject of the study is the specifics of conflict communications between government agencies (using the example of the CEC of Russia) and the public during the presidential elections in 2024.

The purpose of the study is to identify the communicative tactics of a state body in social networks in the context of conflict interaction with the public, on the basis of which practical recommendations can be developed to improve the communicative interaction of the state and society in social networks.

The research is based on a combination of statistical, sentimental and critical discourse analysis. Sentiment analysis is a procedure for identifying and extracting from the text the emotionally and evaluatively colored attitude of the speaker or writer to the subject of the utterance (tonality) ^[10]. The identification of positive, negative or neutral tonality is carried out on the basis of a search for "marker words", that is, vocabulary with a pronounced emotional or evaluative orientation. In this study, sentiment analysis is carried out in an automated mode using a special program. The method of critical discourse analysis is a tool for analyzing textual and oral statements in order to identify and disclose the socio-cultural, political and power relations embedded in these discourses. The method of critical discourse analysis allows us to take into account the socio-cultural and political context of the publication ^[1].

The empirical basis of the study: posts and comments on the Vkontakte social network. The sample consisted of comments under posts on the topic of DEG (3786 in total). The criterion for selecting posts was the number of views (more than 90,000) and the date of publication (01.10.2023–03/19/2024). Such a time range was necessary to determine the specifics of communications on DEG issues before, during and after the vote.

Data analysis and interpretation

At the first stage of the study, monitoring of the coverage of DEG in the social network was carried out, within the framework of which statistics were collected and the tonality of publications was analyzed using the automated program "Quick-+ Sender". The monitoring methodology is as follows: to analyze the main topics raised in publications related to DEG, the Vkontakte social network collected all posts published in the period from October 1, 2023 to March 19, 2024 by keywords: "DEG", "voting through public services", "electronic voting", "electronic elections", "remote elections", "remote voting", "GU", "EG", "public services". The data obtained was filtered by the number of views, and a threshold of more than 90,000 views was set for the study. Then, in order to identify the attitude of society towards DEG on the Vkontakte social network, 3,786 comments were collected under publications that met the specified criteria using comment parsing. Further, comments related only to DEG and grouped by topic were worked out. In the comments, divided into groups, the tone of the message was determined (positive, negative, neutral) (Table 1).

Table 1. Analysis of the tonality of comments on the topic of DEG

Positive and neutral comments total 45.3%. The largest number of negative comments are related to the inability to vote through the DEG. These comments were published during the voting period. The main problem provoking discontent on the part of citizens, and highlighted in the comments, is related to technical failures of the system: both the very inability to vote (and the lack of a solution to this problem), and the fears associated with the fact that a person is deprived of the right to vote due to a malfunction.

The second stage of the study included a more detailed study of the interaction of government agencies and citizens during a conflict situation. Separate elements of critical discourse analysis were used as a method at this stage of the study ^[1].

Further, in all the above posts and comments, the author's style and grammar are preserved.

During the voting, 2 posts were published on the official page of the CEC of Russia on the Vkontakte social network ^[14] highlighting the problem of cyber attacks and system failures. Both publications demonstrated the prompt elimination of all threats:

1) in a post dated March 15, 2024, the following is written: "... since the beginning of voting, about 10.5 thousand attacks on DEG resources have been blocked. The voting portal is directly affected by the main blows – more than 10 thousand. They are also trying to get into the remote voting monitoring portal. The system confidently copes with attacks." The stability of the system, which is able to reflect the threats that have arisen, is emphasized;

2) The post dated March 17, 2024 describes a specific cyberattack, as well as the timing of the stabilization of the system: "The voting took place under conditions of continuous cyber attacks, the most serious of which took place on Friday, March 15. During an L7 DDoS attack, attackers simulate the actions of real users in an attempt to overload the system. With a planned load of 3,000 transactions per second, the system was subjected to a load of 2.5 million transactions per second during the attack. However, the system was able to be stabilized within an hour, as it is designed for a peak load of one million transactions per second."

It is important to note that the comments function is closed on the official page of the CEC of Russia on the Vkontakte social network, that is, this online communication channel is limited. However, the official CEC page is an important source of information for other news sources and communities, therefore, building confidence in the reliability of the system through the above publications is an important factor in neutralizing possible negative reactions.

Also, in the Noodles Media group ^[6] (the ANO Dialog Regions project is the All—Russian interdepartmental competence center in the field of Internet communications and operator of digital dialogue between government and society), 2 posts were published on the Vkontakte social network on the topic of exposing fakes about technical failures in the DEG system.

The first publication dated March 15, 2024 contained information about the regular operation of the Gosuslugi website: "The Gosuslugi website and the remote electronic voting system (DEG) stopped working due to workloads. They write that residents of several regions complain about failures of the Public Services website. In fact, all the sites are working. The download may take a little longer than usual, but both the Public Services website and applications are opening. Moscow reported that the electronic voting system temporarily switched to the electronic queue mode due to peak loads. The waiting time for the user with this algorithm of operation, as a rule, does not exceed several minutes." The publication indicates the presence of a slight delay in the operation of the site, however, a short time to resolve the problem is noted.

In the second publication dated March 15, 2024, a fake about the interference of the Ukrainian special services in the work of the DEG system is exposed: "... fake takes its rightful place in our today's refutation feed. In fact, the morning failures of the remote electronic voting system (DEG) on the Gosuslugi and mos. ru portals occurred not because of the "effective" work of Ukrainian specialists, but because of the overload of the unified identification and authentication system. This was announced by the chairman of the territorial election commission of the DEG Oleg Artamonov. The problems were related to the fact that millions of voters used the system, he added. Currently, the Gosuslugi portal and DEG are operating normally, coping with the high load of those wishing to cast their vote in the presidential elections of Russia...". We emphasize that in this case there is already an indication of the presence of failures in the system, which arise due to the high activity of citizens, but it is reported that the electronic voting.

However, in the comments under these publications, 78% of citizens' messages describe the inability to vote through the DEG system. Moreover, this problem was present during all the voting days. Citizens attached screenshots from the website of Gosuslug, and also shared the answers they received from the hotline. Noodles Media responded several times to those who failed to vote, however, the message contained a template phrase that they should try again later.

In the official group of the Ministry of Finance of Russia ^[8], a post was also published on the Vkontakte social network on March 15, where it was reported that the DEG system was working normally: "The Public Services Portal and the DEG platform are working normally. Despite the high voter activity, the remote electronic voting platform and Public Services are coping with the load. Temporarily, some users could log in more slowly than usual ...". Despite the post, 47% of negative comments were left under the publication on the topic of failures in the DEG system. The Ministry of Finance of Russia responded to several users using the same template phrase as "Noodles Media", but the citizens were not satisfied with this answer.

Thus, despite official statements from government agencies about the regular operation of the DEG system, there was a long-term technical failure that did not allow citizens to vote for several days. The resources did not offer alternative solutions to the problem of electronic voting.

Citizens also noted the passivity of the technical support lines: "The hotline replied the following: "Your problem is observed by many voters. It was sent to specialists."", "I got through to support (I waited 45 minutes for an answer) — they didn't answer anything intelligible, the main thing is that you won't vote at the polling station anymore.", "Yesterday, after a 25-minute wait, they told me to calm down and drink tea)... They also advised me to clean the browser-I cleaned everything-I tried everything-the effect is zero.", "Today I went to the MFC, they advised me to go there for help, imagine again everything is the same. 1 ballot has been issued. The IFC employee just shrugged his shoulders, he couldn't help me with anything."

It is worth noting that information work in official groups was conducted at a high level: posts were published regularly, prompt responses to the appearance of fake information were demonstrated. Nevertheless, the passivity on the part of the technical support of the site, the template responses of representatives of public services provoked a negative perception of the DEG system on the part of citizens.

The following measures may contribute to improving communication in the future:

– publishing posts containing information for users who have had a system failure. The lack of instructions forces users to share their own experience of overcoming the problem, but it is not always relevant to solving the voiced problems.

– creation of a "single window" to support citizens who find themselves in a problematic situation. Such a window can be a publication containing information about network failures or a call to leave comments (messages about problems) under this publication.

– maintaining a constant dialogue with citizens: ignoring negative comments causes tension among users and negatively affects trust in government agencies. Therefore, it is important to identify problems in a timely manner and provide citizens with up-to-date information on the progress of its solution.

So, the analysis of comments related to DEG has shown that the digital environment contributes to the intensification of conflict dynamics due to its accessibility and mass nature of communication channels. The results obtained complement the existing body of research in the field of political communication with new data on the specifics of digital conflicts and interaction between government and society in the context of the mediatization of political processes. Conflict resolution in digital political processes requires the active involvement of government agencies in online communication with citizens. This conclusion is important for further theoretical research, as it emphasizes the need to take into account not only technical, but also socio-psychological aspects in the analysis of communicative interaction in the digital age.