The Internet fixes the changes occurring in the modern Russian language, reflecting the tendencies of its development. Since modern speech practice currently includes words belonging to different systems, including dialect words, the study of their functioning in the Internet is one of the topical problems of modern linguistics. It remains relevant to consider the functioning of dialect words in Internet communities, comments in which reflect the current state of oral-written communication. The aim of the article is to describe the representation of dialect vocabulary in Internet communication on the example of regional communities of Siberian cities (based on the data of the social network VKontakte). The novelty is conditioned by the appeal to the problem of studying the functioning of dialect vocabulary in the Internet space as an under-researched aspect of modern linguistics. The main sources of the material were: Vershininsky Dictionary, from which 193 lexemes labeled "dialect proper" and belonging to the lexico-thematic group "Person" were selected; 465 text Internet comments containing dialect lexical words and retrieved from the social network VKontakte by searching for them in 23 communities of Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, and Tomsk. The subject of analysis is the actualization of dialect units of the lexico-thematic group "Person" in Internet comments to posts in public regional communities of Siberian cities. Based on the data of the large regional communities, relevant information can be obtained about the frequency of word usage of dialect units, the area of their distribution, and their actual lexical meaning. Out of 193 dialect lexical units, 32 units are found in the oral and written speech of users of the regional communities. The largest number of Internet comments (213 out of 465) containing dialect words was recorded in the public communities of Novosibirsk. This can be explained by the fact that Novosibirsk is the largest city in terms of population after Moscow and St. Petersburg, and has a large user audience in VKontakte. The factors affecting the functioning of dialect words in Internet communication also included the commenting activity of followers, the topics of communities and posts published in them, the transparent internal form of some dialect words. It was noted that the high frequency of use of certain dialect words may indicate the loss of their dialect status and their transition into other varieties of the national language (which requires a separate verification based on the data of modern dictionaries of colloquial speech and public communities of other regions). Single examples were identified of meta-linguistic reflection (expressed at the level of graphic design of the utterance) of participants of the regional communities, which serve as an indicator that some users realize the special - primarily stylistic - status of the used word.
