Social Media Discourse: Intensional Approach

Abstract

Social media is a new reality of modern society and represent as a platform of online communication of millions of people. During the discussion reflection of current events is happening, positions of communication’s subjects on topical issues are forming and changing, impact is made. Definition of intentional characteristics of network discourse related to motivational, perceptual-cognitive processes, communicants’ practical activity becomes particularly relevant in this regard. The approach realized in this study is aimed at characterizing the intentional space of social media discourse and identifying discursive markers of Internet users’ actual intentions, suitable for their objective evaluation. 46 messages of various topics and their discussion (1835 comments) on various network resources in 2015–2022 are served as the material for our study. Intent-analysis is used to assess psychological content of speech. This method allows to determine communicators’ intentions associated with current interaction and communicative tactics. 51 categories of intentions are described (4947 realizations). High intensity negative intentions dominate among them regardless of their topics that points to pronounced negative evaluability and potential conflictuality. In addition, social media discourse has clear informational focus due to extensive representation of neutral intentions associated with exchange of opinions, analysis and discussion of the situation. Context specific markers of communicators’ intentions: lexical, semantic, graphic and punctuation are found in it. Some markers are specific to certain intentions; others are realized in actualization of a number of intentions that associated with the variety of expression ways and words’ multiple meanings.