Users' Media Behaviour In Social Networks: Results Of Sociological Survey

Abstract

The article considers the peculiarities of media behaviour of users in the social network. The topicality of the problem under consideration is connected with the fact that today social media sufficiently spread their functional abilities which led to the growth of the number of registered users, the increase of time amount spent online, and the status of social networks as the main source of information. In social networks all the norms are based on the special social responsibility of users, so one of the acute directions in the study of informational content of social networks is the study of opinion and peculiarities of media behaviour of the audience. To study the self-identity of media behaviour and media needs we conducted a sociological survey among the users of VKontakte (N=500). The results of the survey helped us draw the following conclusions: social networks are the true sources of information; a part of users, especially young people, do not count the time spent in social networks which often leads to negative effects on their activity and psychological state; the audience seldom makes a critical analyses of the information spread through social networks; users claim that they often meet unnecessary and spam information. Nevertheless, the audience starts obtaining the criteria in relation to the opinion leader which influence the degree of critical relation to the posted publications.