THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES IN POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
Recently, representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China have actively been answering on their online public relations platforms questions of the population members from all circles of the society using social networking services with a large number of users, which facilitates bilateral communication with the society and dissemination of official information about the policy of China. This is associated with the change in the Internet space in the early 21st century: in the modern social media, transmission and reception of information is often carried out in dialogic and interactive mode. Based on the analysis of the activity of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs press service, the author studies the role of social networking sites in political communication, and specifically their role in the creation of the national image of the country. The article analyzes three aspects of Internet communication: content, communication channels and its language strategies. High frequency nouns of the questions and messages on the Internet platforms have a salient political flavor. Chinese-American relations and the global issues (“Epidemic”, “Hong Kong” and “Xinjiang”) are in the focus of attention. Communication channels are subdivided into internal (“Weibo”) and external (“Twitter” and other international social networking services). As a rule, answers of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs press service are divided into three groups: response to a certain fact; explanation of factual information; expression of the official position of China. The future of the role of the social networking sites in political communication is believed to lie in the sphere of realization of the three main areas: 1) increasing the number of society members taking part in political communication; 2) boosting the impact of social networking sites on state governance; 3) acknowledgement of social networking sites as factors of people’s diplomacy.