Electronic petitions for protecting animals on digital platforms RPI and Change.org[Сравнительный анализ электронных петиций в защиту животных на цифровых платформах РОИ и Change.org]

Introduction. The article presents the results of studying electronic petitions in defense of animal rights. The Russians, who create and sign petitions, find grounds for protecting animals in religious, folklore, literary sources, and in everyday life. This implicit basis of society’s attitude towards animals leads to further political activity in their defense. The aim of the paper is to characterize the specifics of petitions of the digital platforms Change.org and RPI (Russian Public Initiative), aimed at protecting the rights of animals. Methods. The research materials were collected on the digital platforms Change.org (2012—2017) and RPI (2013—2017). Theming of petitions took place on the basis of open coding using the AntConc software. Statistical processing was carried out by means of SPSS Statistics 22 descriptive statistics tools. Scientific novelty of the study. This article defends the point of view according to which the actions of society in defense of animals can be special markers of the latent politicization of society. The article also discusses for the first time electronic petitions for protecting animal rights, published on digital platforms. Results. Among the entire array of petitions on RPI, the petitions in support of animal rights account for less than 5 %, on Change.org they reach 10 %. This fact is associated with differences in the audiences of digital resources data and the peculiarities of these platforms functioning. Executed / effective petitions for protecting animal rights are marked only on Change.org. Among all the successful petitions of this platform, 15 % are devoted to defending animal rights. These figures exceed the success of electronic petitions on political and environmental problems, problems of culture and education. The article also provides a classification of petitions for protecting animal rights. Conclusions. The author of the article supposes that for a more definite understanding of the motivation of Russians who advocate animal rights, a cross-cultural comparison of this activity in Russia and in other countries is necessary.