The main purpose of the article is to study technologies of a smart city to identify the prospects for digital democracy and risks of digital totalitarianism. The basic methodological optics is the discourse analysis, which involves the identification and comparative analysis of various concepts on the selected issues. The supporting methodology was the Case Study principles and the big data analysis capabilities of the Google Trends platform. The article makes a theoretical contribution to the understanding of the algorithmic nature of modern political power, which is the basis of urban technopolitics, as well as the complex configuration of Policy and Politics. Algorithms, as the fundamental basis of digital applications and smart city technologies, are beginning to permeate the entire life of a citizen, closely intertwining with the mechanisms of digital control, rating, political decision-making, extraction, filtering and sorting of information data. It is particularly emphasized that the traditional social reality is transformed into a sociotechnical reality (the phygital world), in which it is no longer possible to rigidly separate the social from the technical. The conclusions indicate that digital democracy is possible only on the principles of open source, while digital totalitarianism, on the contrary, excludes such a model. Without the inclusion of smart citizens, the process of discussion and political decision-making, digital democracy is simply emasculated into a good, but still narrow service on the part of the authorities. In addition, without comprehensive programs in the field of political education, there will be no digital democracy, no smart citizens, only a smart elite will remain.

The aim of the article is to study the model of symbolic interactionism by the American sociologist Herbert Blumer and to identify the analytical elements that are most applicable to the political analysis of internet communications. The authors used the hermeneutic approach, including the identification of central premises in Blumer's model as well as an additional interpretation of such premises. Quantitative content analysis was used as an auxiliary methodological optics. The analysis demonstrated that the analytical tools of symbolic interactionism from the Chicago School (definitive and sensitizing concepts, exploration and inspection, etc.) can be effectively tailored and used for current research of internet communications in applied political science. The authors conclude that identifying the transaction process is the most important result of applying Blumer’s symbolic interactionism model to a study of social media communities by a political scientist. It is demonstrated that the conditions of social media require investigating the mechanism of behavior adaptation by each individual to the behavior of others. This gives an insight into the mechanism by which social life and the political regime are streamlined and stabilized.

The purpose of this article is to identify the distinctive features of Russian gamers. The tasks include determining the conditions for politicization of gamers, discovering their political and symbolic preferences, considering the potential of computer games with a historical plot in shaping the politics of memory of the whole country. The main methodological optics are the principles of sociological survey. The communication capabilities of computer games were interpreted using Herbert Blumer’s symbolic interactionism model. The results showed that the respondents mostly choose the single-player mode in computer games; therefore, the working hypothesis that gamers are trying to switch to the multiuser mode has not been yet confirmed. Although it is not yet clear how the situation on the market and among gamers will evolve in the future. Therefore, a rather controversial topic now arises for further discussion. Most respondents confirm the fact that historical events are distorted through computer games, but players interpret this as an act of creativity rather than intentional political manipulation. It is noteworthy that there are two distinct categories of players who are interested in the history of the 20th century and the Middle Ages. These periods are extremely important for the development of political identity since the medieval period is associated with the historical roots and formation of the country, and the 20th century is associated with significant turning points for Russia. Computer games are becoming an important communication channel that is open to politicization. First, the possibility for such politicization is determined by previous cases of distorting historical facts. Second, the survey showed that the gaming community in Russia is ready to contribute to the protection of historical truth. Third, the fact that Russian gamers need clear and recognizable political symbols in computer games with a historical plot is fundamentally important.