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1. Introduction

   1. Subject of the study.

In consequence of fundamental economical and socio – political transformations, occurring the last decade of twentieth century, significance of such process as “communications” in general and “political communication” in particular in modern society has increased dramatically. In modern democracies, there is a long-term trend towards transformation of “parliamentary-representative systems” in “media representative systems” (Sarcinelli, 2002). This is connected with two factors: declining the interest in politics in the civil society, and decreasing the volume of actual participation in the political process. Because "democracy is the only form of political system in which politics must been constantly engaged in a process of communication” (Sarcinelli, 2002; p.39), insofar the political systems of democratic countries experiencing difficulties with maintaining close contact with citizens through traditional political institutions like political parties and electoral procedures and now increasingly focused on the media.

The emergence of the Internet - fundamentally new interactive communication media - mostly contributed to the increasing attention to the subject of political communication. The first experiments of implementation the Internet technologies in politics as a tool for election campaigning and propaganda related to the early ninetieth (Vershinin, 2001). In the context of this paper, the term “propaganda” will be used in the meaning of “any attempt to persuade anyone to a belief or to a form of action that is a systematic assault on public beliefs disseminated through personal contacts, newspapers, magazines, radio programs, books, and visual media such as motion pictures, theatre, and television” (Hummel and Huntress, 1949; p.123).

In 1993, it was the beginning of state structures penetration into the cyberspace. That was the year, when the first official public Internet site, owned by the White House has appeared in the U.S.A (Vershinin, 2001). However, despite the fact that political communication in the Internet is carried out recently, the importance of this communicative channel is becoming more and more undeniable.

Here, it is important to outline a theoretical background that constituted the body for the aforementioned processes. Among the founders of political communication researches - the field that studies the interactions between media and political systems, locally, nationally, and internationally (Franklin) - the most famous representative on this field is Harold Dwight Lasswell (1953) that in the period after World War I actively investigated the phenomenon of political propaganda. It is considered, that Lasswell was one of the founders of “mass communication” concept. Among others well-known scientists, who belong to the first theorists of mass communication, such names as Herbert Blumer (1953), David Riesman (1965), Serge Moscovici (1976), Jose Ortega y Gasset (1994) should be mentioned.

In the postwar period several theoretical schools of political communication were formed. Karl Deutch (1966) and David Easton (1979) became the founders of cybernetic and system analysis approach on the field of political communication. According to this theories, political communication acts as a property of the political system, interacting with other properties.

Especially it is necessary to allocate the concept of “two-step flow” in communication theory, developed by sociologists of the famous Chicago School: Paul Felix Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet (Lazarsfeld P., Berelson B., Gaudet H.,1968). The “two-step flow” theory says that most people form their opinions based on opinion leaders that influence the media. Opinion leaders are those initially exposed to specific media content, interpret based on their own opinion and then begin to infiltrate these opinions through the general public who then become "opinion followers”. These "opinion leaders" gain their influence through more elite media as opposed to mainstream mass media. In this process, social influence is created and adjusted by the ideals and opinions of each specific "elite media" group and by these media group's opposing ideals and opinions and in combination with popular mass media sources. Therefore, the leading influence in these opinions is primarily a social persuasion.

Significance of "Frankfurt School" approach to the study of political communication should be also highlighted. Among the numerous followers of this approach, such names as Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer (Adorno T., Horkheimer M., 1988), Herbert Marcuse (1964), Herbert I. Schiller (1974) and Jurgen Habermas (1989) are the most significant for this topic. The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main. In works of its authors, such concepts as “critical theory” and the “critique of ideology”, “dialectical method” and “communicative rationality” were researched.

Modern studies on the field of political communication associated with concept of “information society”, established through collective efforts of such scholars as Daniel Bell (1976), Alvin Toffler (1989), Frank Webster (2002), Yoneji Masuda (1980). According to this theory, modern society, as opposed to industrial, characterized primarily by the processes aimed at the production of information, information exchange and consumption. Obviously, in such society, the role and importance of communication is difficult to overestimate. The influence of the theoretical approach, that outlet mass media for a central role in social communication should also be noted. The founder of this approach is considered to be Harold Innis (1950), and one of the most famous representatives - Marshall McLuhan (1967), who argued that “communication medium is the message”. According to this approach, communication contributes to certain types of political communication and impedes others. Thus, the emergence of new communication media can most strongly influence the course of political processes and even lead to a change in the political system of society.

Modern research on the field of political communication in general and on the field of political Internet communications in particular presented by the works of such researches as Doris A. Graber (2001), Richard Davis (1999), David Mervin (2002), Ronald Deibert (1997), Bruce I. Newman (1999) and others.

Generally, all theoretical background, covered the area of political communication on the Internet can be divided into two main streams: authors, who believe that we are dealing with a fundamentally new type of society (Vershinin, 2001; Toffler, 1989; Bell, 1976 etc.) and authors, who believe that that the processes of information previously established relations does not mean the emergence of a new social structure (Schiller,1974; Habermas, 1989; Webster, 2002 etc. ). In the situations of ongoing theoretical debate, the subject of this paper is particularly relevant.