This article presents a comparative analysis of online communities of right-wing radicals and Islamists, who are considered to be numerous and dangerous extremist groups in Russian society. The online communities were selected based on the content posted on the largest Russian social networking site VKontakte. The goal of this article is to determine the strategy and tactics employed by extremist online communities for survival on social networking sites. The authors discovered that both right-wing radical and Islamist groups employ similar behavioural techniques, with the mimicry of ideologically neutral content as the most common. In addition, every extremist community also applies some unique methods. For example, if there is a risk of being blocked, right-wing radicals tend to shift their activity and communication to the other internet-based platforms that are not under state control; however, Islamists prefer to suddenly change the content of their communities (i.e. by using secondary mimicry).

The article offers a new method of quality of life assessment based on online activities of social networks users. The method has obvious advantages (quickness of research, low costs, large scale, and detailed character of the obtained information) and limitations (it covers only the “digital population,” whereas the rural population is not included). The article dwells on the potential of social networks as a data source to analyze the quality of life; it also presents the results of an empirical study of online activities of the users of VK, the most popular Russian social network. Using the obtained data, the authors have calculated the quality of life index for 83 regions of the Russian Federation based on 19 parameters of economic, social, and political aspects of life quality.

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