Modern linguistics works identify computer discourse analysis as one of the most vital scientific problems. The paper discusses various approaches to discourse studies and describes the linguistic and extralinguistic features of modern computer discourse. Communication in a computer-mediated discourse is an object of research and the linguistic features of scientific network discourse are described. The paper describes the results of the concepts of computer-mediated communication studies and

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... nguistic genres development based on the works of modern linguists. The results of the study show that digital technologies assist in the development of new types of communication, and change the old ones. Discourse is a real speech element and a unit of verbal communication and could be regarded as a text, but the text is not a discourse but an abstract mental unit realized in discourse. Special attention is paid to the scientific and educational discourses, which are significantly influenced by computer communication discourse genre development and expand the scope of academic interaction. Another aspect of the computer discourse study, described in the paper, is genre classifications research, which is analogical to the genres of traditional communication and includes general and new genres used in electronic media. The functional genre classification considers information, social, directive, presentational, aesthetic, and entertainment genres studied in the process of communicative interaction. The electronic genres' characteristics are dependent on communicative goals, mode of interaction, text forms, composition, and linguistic features. Special attention was drawn to characteristics of the computer-mediated communication discourse research and further ways of the linguistic study of modern computer discourse were proposed.