Modern Social and Political Challenges and Mechanisms of their Leveling Using Advanced Digital Technologies

This paper analyzes the political life of Russia at the federal level. It considers the rise and fall of the political parties in Russia, as well as the ideas and interests they represent. The low electoral activity among citizens provided grounds for this study to discuss representation of the citizens' interests in the political arena, and examine the degree of public approval of ideas that are supported by the federal political structures. A correlation and regression analysis was conducted in order to assess the role of different participants in the political process. The paper also provides an abstract model of the current political system where all the goals and aspirations of various political actors are interrelated. With the help of the ontological schemes, the main part of the research describes the current work of the Russian political parties which is carried out using the tools of the representative democracy. The study also focuses on the potential opportunity of switching the work of the parties to the principles of the direct democracy, which implies bringing people with similar political views into a strong information community. This will create the new political environment that can be defined as a social network with the expanded political functions, where the verified users set the agenda by direct voting. In addition, using the methods of the hierarchy analysis the paper considers two approaches to the establishment of a digital political party. The first way is to reorganize the largest pro-government and opposition parties, while the second one implies creating a new party with the digital mechanism that ensures an interaction between its members. The analysis shows that the most promising solution to a problem of the low electoral activity is setting up a digital political party from scratch. As a result, this study presents conclusions on the ways to raise awareness and interest of the Russian citizens in politics.