The article presents the results of a longitudinal study of young people belonging to the category of generation Z. The study was conducted over a period of 3 years, starting in 2019, and was devoted to studying the formation of social characteristics of generation Z under the influence of socialization in the digital environment. The study also included a comparative analysis of the younger and older age groups in Generation Z, who are now high school students and students. The results of the study showed that the younger representatives of generation Z have a more pronounced desire for individualism and self-organization on the Internet. The social characteristics of generation Z must be taken into account when organizing online learning.

Research on the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the field of public communication has become a trend of the last decade. This article aims to identify the relationship between the relational qualities of digital platforms (affordances) and the processes of judgment formation during communication on urban issues. To analyze the functioning of the process of lay epistemics on digital platforms of communication between the authorities and the population, we developed a new methodology of discourse analysis by modifying the parametric model of judgment of the American social psychologist A. Kruglanski and introducing the scale of intensity of its criteria. Communication on the platform "Our St. Petersburg", representing the possibility of interaction of citizens with the city authorities, was used as an empirical base of the research. As a result of the research using descriptive and regression analysis, and a visual survey of this platform, it was found that there is interconnection between the dominance of affordances corresponding to the "authoritarian" type of governmentality and the formation of predominantly informational judgments of the behavioral type. It was also found that the criteria of the parametric model have a different impact on the formation of a certain type of judgment in the framework of digital communication.