The Communicative Potential of Internet Commentary at the System of Public Relations (Macedonian-Albanian case)

Abstract

An Internet comment, being, in fact, a private opinion left under a post, with a certain set of similar statements, may reflect a trend in issues and topics of concern to society. In this article, based on the analysis of the comments of users of the social network, an assumption is made about the reflection in them of a threat to the integrity of society. The Macedonian social media space was chosen as a case for monitoring, the subject of interest was Internet comments on representatives of the Albanian ethnic minority of the Republic of North Macedonia. The relationship between representatives of two ethnic groups (Albanians and Macedonians) has a conflict background and conflict potential. Based on the results of the analysis of the corpus of verbal data, the author formulated assumptions about the role of Internet commentary in reflecting the mood of society and its potency as one of the conditions in the development of the Albanian-Macedonian conflict, which is currently in a latent phase. On the one hand, comments left on social networks have a significant destructive potential within the framework of the described case; on the other hand, they have constructive potency, since the space of social networks becomes a kind of substitute in relation to the physical space and makes it possible to keep a possible conflict at the level of rejection in Internet comments, not allowing it to "get out outside."