Network Analysis of Political Internet Communities: from Formalized to «Unobserved» Groups
The article is dedicated to the development of the political communities in social networks analysis methods. Main stages of network approach in the political science is described in the research. Researchers review the most significant methods and techniques in the political online communities studies for the last decade. The article shows the contemporary Russian scientists contribution in the development of online communities learning techniques. Networks and social network analysis methods and techniques become universal scientific approaches for several scientific fields. Boundary-transcending trends were critical means of science integration. Researchers present the results of experiment in which evaluate the possibilities of study unobserved political groups using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model. The brief LDA foundation history and possible modifications for social topic modeling based on social networks data are discribed in the review. Using sample from one feed aggregator telegram channel in period of 2020 autumn, the authors display the most valuable topics in the Russian segment of political communication. Also it provides communities ideological preferences. Modified qualitative sociological methods can be used in online political communities discursive features research without any specific computer science techniques. Since about 70% of the Internet data are generated in the social networks, velocity and volume data necessitate new data mining techniques, databases capacity and computation processes. In other words, it provides a big data approach in social network analysis.