Conflict Prevention in Internet during Spread of Coronavirus Infection (Survey Results)

The article presents the results of a survey of respondents, one of the tasks of which was to propose a response to a conflict-provoking message in such a way as to avoid escalation of the conflict and continue communication with the aggressor. The survey participants were 115 respondents (22% male and 78% female) aged 20 to 35, with incomplete higher or higher education. The respondents were presented with 15 texts, which were real comments on posts in LiveJournal, containing markers of conflict-provoking intention by the sender and published during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study of the respondents’ responses was conducted using methods of linguostylistic, contextual, and statistical analysis. Data analysis identified four speech strategies used by the respondents to prevent conflictual interaction, as well as tactics through which these strategies were implemented: self-defense strategy (distancing tactic, pluralism accentuation tactic, topic change tactic), politeness strategy (gratitude tactic, advice tactic, apology tactic, offer of help tactic), submission strategy (concession tactic, reinforcement of aggressor’s authority tactic), persuasion strategy (reasoning tactic, argumentation tactic).

internet-mediated communication, communicative conflict, conflict prevention, communicative strategies, speech tactics