The idea of social protest among Russian youth of the Far East

 The article presents materials of the semantic reconstruction of ideas of various forms of social protest among young people of two age groups based on the materials of an empirical study conducted in 2020. In the course of the study representatives of two socio-demographic groups of youth from Vladivostok (Primorsky Territory) were interviewed: higher education students aged 18–24 and young adults aged 25–30. The carried out semantic reconstruction allowed to formulate the structural and content characteristics of the young people ideas about the five significant forms of the collective protest: petition, rally, strike, riot and rebellion. The semantic connections of the protest forms with the existential and political values of the young people were revealed. The study also succeeded in reconstructing the emotional component of the protest phenomena ideas. The category structure of the semantic space of ideas about the forms of protest has been determined. Common categories identified on the basis of associations include “values and goals”, “subjects”, “emotions”, “characteristics of a phenomenon”, “protest”, and “cultural and historical connotations”. The general categories of protest assessment, according to the semantic differential (SD), include “iintellectuality and honesty”, “hypocrisy and self-interest (honesty)”, “peace – aggressiveness”, “strength”. These categories, identified on the material of associations, in comparison with the categories of thinking obtained using factor analysis of the semantic differential data, allow to reconstruct both rational and unconscious levels of ideas about protest. Comparative analysis of ideas about different forms of protest demonstrates that on an emotional level a rally is the closest to youth. On a rational level, the petition is also positively assessed, while the youth of both groups are dissatisfied with the ineffectiveness of this form in practice. Young people do not associate radical forms of protest (riot and rebellion) with values and goals significant to them. At the affective level, they are perceived mostly negatively. In general, the identified categories allow to reconstruct the structure of the organization of the subjective experience of perceiving different forms of political and social protest in two age groups of young people. The data obtained in this study can be useful for further study of protest moods, used by state authorities and political parties in practical work.

representation, protest, political consciousness, psychosemantics, rally, Vladivostok, youth

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