Analysis of Digital Protest in The Religious Semiosphere of Russian Provincial Cities

Abstract

Digitalization that have been actively developing in Russia over the past ten years have an impact on the protest moods of people who share a religious worldview. The subject of this analysis is the forms of virtual protest activity on the Internet, which are classified as: protest against religion as an institu-tion that protects the existing political, economic and social foundations of Russian society from the atheism and other faiths and religious systems point of view; protest against the existing official confes-sional hierarchy within the normative religious dis-course; protest against internal confessional dog-mas aimed at reform or division. Digital protest ac-tivity is based on a marginal religious identity that does not affect the normative and confessional dis-course, but is formed within the framework of politi-cal, mythological, and ideological discourses. Pro-test moods against religion as a social institution, or atheistic protest correlates with political and socio-economic protest moods in provincial cities of Rus-sia.