Discursive Production of Political Meanings in the Social Media of the North Caucasus

The article, prepared as part of the implementation of state task FSRN-2025-0010 “Marking and Classification of Political Orientations of Youth in the North Caucasus in Social Media” with the support of the Ministry of Sci-ence and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, investigates the mechanisms of the discursive construc-tion of political meanings in the digital space of the macro-region. Based on an interdisciplinary synthesis of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), political semiotics, and the Narrative Policy Framework, the authors recon-struct models of symbolic identification and strategies for representing youth political preferences. The empiri-cal basis comprises a corpus of social media messages analyzed using a hybrid methodology. The phenome-non of mass political latency is deconstructed, interpreted as a strategic reservoir where routine problems are transformed into political demands through the activation of normative codes of justice. A semiotic asymmetry of discursive regimes is revealed: loyalist discourse implements a strategy of positive normalization and mo-nopolization of the image of the future, while protest discourse relies on ethical delegitimization alongside blocked project thinking. Particular attention is paid to the phenomenon of project radicalism, which combines aggressive rhetoric with a demand for accelerated modernization. It is concluded that the political subjectivity of North Caucasus youth is formed as a dynamic system where affective regimes are primary relative to rational argumentation, and the competition of meanings unfolds within the field of temporal strategies.