In essence, a significant mass of the online public is now not much different from TV viewers, and all of these people can be manipulated through long-established channels.

Just a few years ago, the Internet was considered a breeding ground for the emergence and development of a new type of democracy based on network technologies. Unfortunately, the past years have increased skepticism: what can we talk about if no constructive public discussion is possible on the Russian Internet? But it is precisely public discussion, a system of competent expert assessments, that creates the basis for the formation and functioning of democracy.

The absence of objective mechanisms for assessing the competence and appropriateness of publicly expressed assessments, judgments and opinions obviously leads our society to even greater infantilism and degradation. The function of judge is actively taken over by the authorities and the structures that support them, which ultimately turns the Russian Internet into an endless virtual lynching of the unwanted. And the more actively those who disagree with the government's policies are trampled into the mud, the louder the accusations that it is they who are provoking the situation with their activities.

Does this mean that the problem is in social networks, which have not only become a platform for those who in the recent past were doomed to spend their entire lives writing for media outlets without a chance of publication, but have also allowed these people to find each other and, through mutual PR, impose themselves as experts and opinion leaders on the entire society?

The idea of blaming social networks for everything is an attempt to avoid discussing much more serious problems. In Russia, the line between online pseudo-experts and legitimate specialists has been destroyed deliberately and methodically, and not from below, but from above. It is not so difficult to establish when and why this happened.

As the rift between the country's intellectual elite and the government grew, the latter had to urgently look for people who could publicly approve of everything the government considered right and replace the intractable and dissenters. In a sense, the triumph of anti-intellectualism came with the 2012 presidential elections, during which the government turned away from the rebellious "creative class" and opposed them with imaginary "simple workers." The catch was that the government had no real "workers" in reserve at all, ready to post on the Internet, write articles in newspapers, or, even more so, speak on television programs and at rallies. And so, in the spring of 2012, it was necessary to urgently bring into circulation all those who were ready to voice the "temniks" of the government, and the fact that the status and competence of these people were more than questionable was sold as a sign of their pure nationality. It was then that the floodgates opened, through which poured all that public that had previously been, if not ignored at all, then at least kept at a distance with disgust. With the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict, all these developments reached a quantitatively and qualitatively new level.

It should not be forgotten that technologies are actively developing and becoming cheaper. The Internet has long ceased to be a habitat for intellectuals and the technically advanced public. The mass arrival of ordinary people to the Internet, including outright marginals of all stripes, accustomed to trusting television and savoring the most ridiculous rumors and conspiracy theories, has formed a new image of the typical user. In fact, a significant mass of the network public is now not much different from TV viewers, and all these people can be manipulated through long-established channels.

In such a situation, it is not surprising that, wanting to free itself from the flow of insults and bullying, the thinking public increasingly switches to monologue mode, preferring to argue with their own kind in closed and controlled environments.

Russia's path to democracy will be long and painful, and it will likely not take place via the Internet, which will remain a hotbed of obscurantism, inertia, and revanchism for a long time. Russia needs free and calm discussions, competent experts, and authoritative moderated platforms for broad civil dialogue - otherwise our society will continue to rush between talk shows on federal channels and permanent hysteria on the Internet.

Author – President of the Institute for Development and Modernization of Public Relations, Yekaterinburg

Impossibility of discussions