Adolescent and youth destructive movement Russian school shooters as one of the specific manifestations of terrorism

Abstract

The article is devoted to understanding the characteristics of the association of Russian school shooters operating in the Internet segment, recognized by the highest judicial authority as a terrorist group. The relevance of the topic is due to the growing popularity of the “Columbine”* subculture among young people. Approximately 700 similar online communities have been identified, and armed attacks on educational institutions by their followers have been recorded in 34 regions of our country, destabilizing society. To establish its distinctive features, the opinions of domestic and foreign scientists in the field of criminal law, sociology, and psychology, recommendations from security officials, and information about previously blocked Internet communities were analyzed, text content of electronic networks, behavior patterns of individuals in preparation for 39 attacks on educational institutions in Russia. A study of the positions of theorists and practitioners has revealed that Columbine* groups are characterized by a theme of communication that unites the participants-subscribers, symbolic self-identification, a single time period of existence in virtual space, the same content (about violence) of the information resource, the presence of an organizer-coordinator of the process of disseminating harmful information, who may represent the interests of another country. It has been established that an online network community with a rapidly changing number of anonymous participants does not exhibit such characteristics of stability as consistency of composition, close connections between participants, and coordination of their actions. An analysis of the text content of online resources made it possible to identify subscribers interested in the Columbine* ideology, organizers of the dissemination of prohibited information, and to describe the characteristic features of the bearers of this ideology for their accurate identification in practice.