POST-SECULARITY IN THE AGE OF DIGITALIZATION: THE BUDDHIST TRADITIONAL SANGHA OF RUSSIA ON THE VKONTAKTE SOCIAL NETWORK

Abstract

In the context of digitalization, religious organizations are not only adopting new channels of communication but also redefining the forms of their public presence, which makes the analysis of religion through the lens of post-secularity particularly relevant. Russian Buddhism is especially illustrative in this regard, as it combines traditional religious forms with active engagement in the contemporary media environment. The aim of the article is to examine the digital presence of the Buddhist Traditional Sangha of Russia in social media and to identify the ways in which religious, ethnocultural, and public functions are combined in its online communication. The objectives of the study include identifying the most engaging types of publications, revealing the stable semantic dominants of its digital discourse, and interpreting the findings from a post-secular perspective. The empirical material consists of publications from the official VKontakte community of the Buddhist Traditional Sangha of Russia over a ten-year period of its existence. The analysis is based on a combination of quantitative assessment of user engagement and content analysis of word frequency, which made it possible to correlate audience reactions with the internal structure of the community’s digital discourse. The study demonstrates that the digital communication of the Buddhist Traditional Sangha of Russia cannot be reduced to mere information dissemination. The strongest audience response is generated by posts situated at the intersection of religious, cultural, and public agendas. The frequency analysis shows that the community’s digital discourse is dominated by institutional-organizational and sacral-ritual layers, while personal-authoritative, ethnocultural, and socio-public registers also play a significant role. The article concludes that the digital presence of the Buddhist Traditional Sangha of Russia constitutes a form of post-secular public religion in which the sacred retains its significance while operating within a broader ethnocultural, regional, and public context.