State Politics’ Digitalization as the Discourse of Modernity.

Abstract

Digital politics is discovered in the research as a new phenomenon of political process realization. This phenomenon has been changing the principles of political actors and institutions. It is defined, that the digital politics emergence is the immanent attribute of the digital discourse of globalization. Thus, the political actors competing for power, in order to implement and influence the power must perform the political interactions in digital environment, which is constantly transforming. It is considered that the discourse of modernity is a digital field, which predetermines a procedure of forming digital political subjects, methods of exploiting of digital infrastructure and mechanisms of integration of fragmented communities. As a result, the digital field defines a state’s digital politics.    

It is stated, that the digital politics is a process of shaping political discourse within changing digital infrastructure, which is constantly modified within network reality of modern politics and society. And the digital field influences this process. A new type of political actor is defined – a digital political subject, who may implement the politics only with mobilization of influential users’ networks, which are existing in the digital space, into his/her sphere. It is defined, that the networks are the main resource of the digital political subjects, and the networks’ integration is the key condition of effective politics performing in the reality of global digitalization. The digital political subjects compete for fragmented communities’ attention, and the communities’ participation is defined with a personal interest, while political ideology (or affiliation) is less important. In these processes, traditional political actors have been losing their influence, and the political process is constructed with political projects. For these projects, a rapid fragmented networks are needed, which are united with weak connections. The key characteristics of the digital political actor are discovered: methods of digital infrastructure exploiting, methods of interactions with the fragmented networked communities of users, and political space structuring. It is defined, that the digital political actors have to improve their digital instruments for large-scale networks mobilization within digital political practices.