The Image of Modern Orthodox Fundamentalism in Social Media

The purpose of the research is to analyze the correlation between the process of mediatization of religion and the modern Orthodox fundamentalist discourse, which is a specific phenomenon in-between political ideology and the religious system. In the article, Orthodox fundamentalism is considered as a new phenomenon that emerged as a response to the massive changes in modernity in 20^th and 21^st centuries. The technological progress and digitalization processes bring new aspects to everyday life and cause change in the existing religiosity. The novelties result in the integration of new mechanisms into the traditional functioning of religious organizations, social movements and ideologies. However, the very concept of mediatization is relatively new to science and has not been fully formed yet. At this stage religious institutions in Russia continue their development as full-fledged public institutions after the long period of state atheism in the USSR. The author points out the formats and forms of interaction in the media of official religious institutions and organizations, as well as informal and marginal associations. Special attention is paid to the unique nature of the new religious media and functioning of religion in the media. The empirical part of this study is based on the qualitative and quantitative content analysis of the four Orthodox media outlets. This analysis is aimed at classifying and clustering the main types of content and thematic blocks in the analyzed media. This approach has a number of advantages, because it allows us to understand the attitude of people to certain topics, images or events. The discourse of the selected four media has partial fundamentalist tendencies. The main variables of the study are such variables as the volume of the audience, the number of published posts, “like” marks, reposts from the group for the specified period, the most popular posts by views, the most popular topics by ratings. The author also describes and conceptualizes the basic concepts inherent in the religious conflict in the media about religious values, their relationship with secular ones. Orthodox religious media in Russia vary in their media outreach and identification of their core audience. It is concluded that for Orthodox fundamentalist media, the most important part is not religious, but socio-political.

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