The article presents some results of the scientific project devoted to studying semantics of unity and animosity in Russian lexis and phraseology. The author aims at revealing the linguistic tools which are used to construct the emotional support in virtual communities. The data include 50 posts and comments published in the virtual community “12 Hugs” in the social network VKontakte. Drawing on critical discourse analysis the author reveals 6 basic emotions represented by the members of the community. It is shown that the emotional support is actualised in different ways by the array of verbal and non-verbal means. The main linguistic tools of its construction include emotive lexical units, lexemes with the semantics of unity and evaluation, phraseological units, adverbs, feminitives, and elliptical constructions.