THEORY OF SOCIAL MEDIA AS A RESEARCH SUBJECT AT THE TURN OF THE XX AND XXI CENTURIES

Abstract

Theory of Social Media - a topic, which active learning begun at the second part of XX century. It became mostly popular after an appearance of the Internet - net, which opened new horizons of communication between people all around the Earth. Dense study of the social media started at the beginning of the XXI century, but one of the first professionals to open this theory became Marshall McLuhan, who published a famous study «Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man» and an author of media division method to «hot» and «cool». In this article A. G. Vernik leading lights in the field of study of the theory of Social Media at the second half of the XX and beginning of the XXI century and analyze points of view of different authors about this question. In this article mentioned works of Russian professionals - Konetskaya, Yudaev, Gilbo and foreigners - Barabasi and Surowiecki. In addition, the article says about new form of society management - netocracy, which appers due to social media. Author concludes with the importance of this study, which scopes by many experts, and predicts the further development of Social Media - it would play a bigger part in the information space and become the major source of news.