Sinusoid of communicative activity in online communities of “treasure hunters”: a trend or sporadicity?

Abstract

Abstract. Using online communities of “treasure hunters” in the Republic of Bashkortostan (RB) and the Orenburg Region as examples, this article presents a comparative content analysis using parsing programs to examine the structure of the groups and some of the characteristics of user communication. It has been established that the communicative activity of participants in the studied groups is not temporary, but rather ongoing. The process of communicative interaction in these online communities registers both the renewal of graphic style and the loss of substantive elements. The structuring of comments on published material using digital symbols creates areas of concentration and distribution of attention. The reverberation process assumes varying degrees of communication intensity among group members, expressed in alternating peaks and troughs of attention to materials published in the feed. The dynamics of the communicative image of online communities resembles a sine wave of transformations in their virtual interactions due to increases or decreases in subscribers’ communicative activity.

For citation: Salikhova, E. (2025). Sinusoid of communicative activity in online communities of “treasure hunters”: a trend or sporadicity? Russia’s Directions. Vol. 3. No. 4. P. 151–169.

Additional Info

Submitted: September 27th, 2025

Reviewed: October 6th, 2025

Copyright: © Auhtors, 2025

Distribution: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)