Columbine Subculture as a Threat to Information Security

Abstract

This study is based on the analysis of law enforcement practice, monitoring of social networks, analysis of media materials and theoretical works of Russian and foreign scholars on the topic of school shooting. The paper presents characteristics of the columbine subculture at the present stage of its development in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. The authors describe the main provisions that form the basis of the ideology of school shooting, substantiates that this ideology has an expressed political essence and has signs of a terrorist ideology. The authors analyse the relationship between the propaganda of school shooting and the propaganda of other destructive subcultures (right-wing and leftist-anarchism, incels, AUE (an extremist organization banned in the Russian Federation), etc.). They come to the conclusion that the columbine subculture in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet, on the one hand, intersects, merges with other (sometimes diametrically opposed) destructive movements that promote hatred, enmity and (or) violence, and, on the other hand, opposes itself to other destructive ideologies.