The article presents the results of the study of urban Internet communities of a causal nature in the regions of Southwestern Siberia. Communities are analysed by variables: the degree of their development, the number of participants, the goals and objectives set, the forms of activity used. These communities were identified in social networks and messengers such as VKontakte, Facebook, Twitter, Odnoklassniki, Instagram, Telegram, as well as among YouTube channels and specialized sites. The informatisation of modern society provides citizens with more and more opportunities to participate in public life and establish horizontal communications. This is combined with the processes of raising the level of civic consciousness and the search for "workarounds" for participation in public politics. Both of these tendencies lead to more and more active involvement of citizens in the processes of self-organisation and participation in various associations. This leads to an increase in the number of urban problematic (causal) communities and in the number of their participants, the creation of new projects, and the massisation of their actions. There can be distinguished two main vectors for the development of such urban communities: urban protection and environmental. The first direction deals with the issues of arranging the living environment of citizens and creating "places of application" of causal civil activity, with problems of combining commercial, social, historical and cultural principles in the development of cities. The second one deals with the issues of protecting the natural environment, improving the living conditions of citizens, changing the consciousness and behaviour of people towards those more environmentally friendly. The set of methods used by all these communities is very wide: information campaigns in media and the Internet, filing petitions and appeals, organising of practical activities in the direction of their work, educating citizens, holding pickets and other public events, establishing contacts between civil society and government. It should be noted that there is no strict distinction between the communities of the two main problem areas, since the tasks they strive to solve (for example, the preservation of green areas in cities, the fight against landfills, etc.), as well as the composition of the participants, partially coincide.

local self-government, civil initiatives, urban communities, social networks, network communities, self-organisation of citizens, city protection movement, civil activity, environmental movement

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