Political actors in Russian Twitter: Patterns of blaming and responsibility in Twitter discussions on conflicts with post-Soviet immigrants

Online communication platforms have rapidly become a substantial element of e-governance processes in Europe and beyond. Today, research has shown that, in cases of social unrest and/or emergency, political actors responsible for their resolution are able to efficiently use microblogging platforms (including Twitter) to promote the discourse of harmonization. But in today's Russia, where the growth of inter-ethnic conflicts between the re-settlers from the post-Soviet South (Central Asia and South Caucasus) and the host communities in cities and towns has coincided with the growth of online communication milieus and their radicalization, political actors as well as NGOs seem to play minor roles in online communication management, including the cases of social unrest. We explore two Twitter discussions on inter-ethnic conflicts in Moscow to describe the presence of political actors, their roles in conflict resolution, and the patterns of expectations of other users towards the politicians. We discover extremely low political participation, as well as the phenomenon of 'radical replacement' of the roles of political emergency managers by nationalist users.