The ‘smart mob’ linguatechnology interpretative potential in commemorative Internet discourse

The paper aims to reveal verbalization means of the ‘smart mob’ linguatechnology and determine their interpretative and manipulative potential in commemorative internet discourse. The smart mob is understood as a controllable socio-communicative group with autopoietic, or autonomous, organization. The relevance of the research lies in that it is aligned with the directions of the Russian state policy set in Presidential Decree № 809 of 09.11.2022 and Presidential Decree № 314 of 08.05.2024. Presidential Decree № 809 (Section 24g) proclaims “implementation of the state information policy aimed at enhancing the role of traditional values in the mass consciousness and countering the spread of destructive ideology (translated by me, E. Murashova, here and below)”. The smart mob can have an ideological impact on a socio-communicative group, primarily by transmitting the idea of the shared historical memory as a traditional value. Under Presidential Decree № 314 (Section 8k) the state policy heads for “improvement of mechanisms of public administration in the sphere of historical education”, which may presuppose technologization of commemoration, including through elaboration of the ‘smart mob’ technology. The research material is over 1000 English- and Russian-language political internet texts published from 2018 to 2025. The linguapragmatic, linguasemiotic and discursive types of analysis were used to achieve the aim of the paper. Observation of the research material showed that the main format of realizing the ‘smart mob’ technology in commemorative internet discourse is the online ritual. Three elements of the structure of the commemorative online ritual were revealed, which correspond to its main stages: consolidation, organization and management. Certain components of the ‘smart mob’ linguatechnology in the online ritual were identified and described: the strategy of informing, the technique of inclusion, the method of hypertextualization, etc. The author lists and illustrates verbalization means of each linguatechnology component.