Congist'26: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Crisis

Rethinking and Analyzing Digital Socio-Political Communication across Crises and Global Challenges

D3-S4-A8

15 May 2026, 15:10

20m

A8 (Istanbul University Faculty of Letters)

Oral Presentation Session 4.3 (Day 3)

Speaker

Olga Malysheva (Kuban State University)

Description

Crises and global challenges are reshaping digital socio-political communication. The convergence of online and offline spheres, technological acceleration, and the dominance of big data have created a VUCA/BANI environment where nonlinearity undermines classical models of crisis research. This raises cognitive load and alters patterns of message perception and circulation, reshaping mechanisms of socio-political participation.
In today’s digital landscape, where artificial intelligence serves as core infrastructure, information dominance depends on adaptability—specifically, the capacity to process and strategically filter unstructured data. Priorities include identifying relevant datasets, developing reproducible methods, and designing AI-driven tools for predictive analytics.
Society, viewed as a system of networked actors, generates discursive data that shape practices and trigger political responses. This process can be conceptualised as the Digital Socio-Political Agenda (DSPA), a multilayered construct comprising Official discourse and Network discourse dimensions. Its polysemiotic and multimodal nature circulates meanings across platforms, converting online political capital into offline action and underscoring the need for new approaches to DSPA modelling.
We propose a network-based, machine-learning methodology for analyzing the DSPA. By modeling the predicational core of discursive fields—the structural foundation of the DSPA—we identify the semantic roles of actors and extract propositional content, which reveals the cognitive-pragmatic patterns driving the DSPA.
To validate this approach, we developed and trained the neural network Conceptoscope. It enables reproducible analysis of the DSPA across diverse networked communications, allowing early detection of information threats, reinforcement of constructive participation, and reduction of destructive dynamics—thus enhancing the resilience of socio-political systems in turbulent contexts.