Textual Manifestation of Group Fears in Network Discussions

Group fear is a form of belonging to a real or virtual community. The group fear is caused by a threat of group disorder and follows from the values that establish the particular community. Interest in group fears is determined primarily by their contribution to intergroup differentiation, on the one hand, and to the emotional dynamics in large and small social groups, and society as a whole, on the other hand. Presently, the communicative space of social networks has become the main medium for the manifestation and spread of emotions. In this study, the data of the emotive-predicate analysis of comments from discussions in VKontakte communities of Kurgan the from December 2020 to June 2022 were used. The analysis revealed some typical ways of expressing fears that attributed to group subjects in discussions in network communities of Kurgan. Some features of the group fears causation in comparison with individual fears causation were also identified. A numerical index is proposed for quantifying the predominance of group or individual type fears in texts.