Destructive Speech Behavior in the Digital Environment: Factors that Determine the Negative Impact on the User’s Worldview

Abstract

Today, in the context of universal digitalization and informatization of the society, the Internet environment is becoming a criminogenic communication environment, favorable for the commission of "speech crimes", i.e. speech actions that form the objective element of the corpus delicti. The paper is devoted to the criminological analysis of the factors that determine the negative impact of information threats on users of the digital communication environment (primarily, the Internet environment). Based on monitoring social communication in the Internet and analyzing the patterns of language functioning in conditions of the Internet communication, the authors summarize the main properties of the Internet communication and factors that provide the possibility of abuse of rights (freedom of speech and the right to freely search, receive, transmit, produce and distribute information) in order to have a destructive impact on the ideological safety of Internet users (primarily children and young people). Such factors include simulation, virality, hyperreality, the phenomenon of social disinhibition, etc. Particular attention is paid to the concept of destructiveness of information impact, considered on the basis of an analysis of the phenomena of human destructiveness, aggression and cyber aggression, deviance and delinquency. The authors propose to treat content risks and communication risks as forms of representation of destructive speech behavior in the digital environment as information threats to the ideological security of the Internet communication. The paper provides the authors’ classification of the information risks under consideration based on a generalization of judicial and forensic practice (including cases when materials were included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials by court decisions), the practice of the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor), as well as interdisciplinary analysis of scientific publications. The authors suggest that the terms "mortilatrya" and "eridophobia" be introduced in the context of ensuring the worldview security. The authors of the paper analyze the influence on the axiosphere of the Internet user of delinquent subcultures that erode a person’s identity in order to impose a new pseudo-correct- identity.