Russian Online Research Articles

Russia – Africa: The Role of the Media in the Process of Cross-Cultural Communication

The article is devoted to the role of mass media in the process of intercultural communication with African countries. Due to the growing sanctions pressure from the European Union and the United States, Russia is looking for alternative political and economic allies, which it seeks to fi nd among the countries of the African continent. In this context, the issue of intercultural communication with this region is becoming increasingly important. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that the image of African states in the leading Russian print media does not correspond to Russia’s stated political ambitions towards these countries. It is observed that the image of the partner countries in the Russian media is not presented fully enough, with an emphasis on the negative side. The article substantiates the idea that the awareness of Russian residents about the culture of Africa is an important component of successful communication. The study aims to evaluate the functions of the media in the process of forming the image of a number of countries and, in accordance with this, analyze the image of Africa being formed in the Russian media fi eld. The novelty of the research lies in presenting a new perspective on the role of the media in the process of intercultural communication. The theoretical basis was scientifi c articles, documents published by public organizations and public authorities. The method of content analysis is used as an approach to the study of media texts. The research materials were published by the major Russian online media “Argumenty i Fakty (Arguments and Facts)” and “RIA Novosti”. The results show the presence of a negative asymmetry in the representation of the image of Africa. The prospect of this study is further and more detailed monitoring of the tone of media publications about Africa and the formation of specifi c proposals for correcting information policy. Keywords: coverage policy, image of Africa, intercultural communication, prospects for interaction, role of the media

On Solution of Consumer Disputes Arising on Russian Online Platforms

On Solution of Consumer Disputes Arising on Russian Online Platforms

Pengaruh Kualitas Pelayanan, Harga, dan Citra Merek terhadap Keputusan Pembelian Jasa Transportasi Online Maxim di Yogyakarta

Maxim is a Russian online transportation that has developed in Indonesia. The large number of online transportation in Indonesia makes Maxim offer affordable prices with many choices of services with good quality to attract customer. The study aims to determine the influence of service quality, price, and brand image on purchasing decisions for Maxim online transportation services. Using a quantitative approach, with data sources derived from primary and secondary data. Primary data was obtained by distributting questionnares to respondents. Secondary data sources were obtained from journals and books. The sample collection technique uses non-probability sampling (purposive sampling). The research sample was 168 respondents with the criteria of being students, residing in Yogyakarta, and had used Maxim,s online transportation services at least once. The data was processed using descriptive analysis test methods, instrument tests, classical assumption tests, multiple linear regression analysis, and hyphotesis testing with the help of SPSS 27 software. The result showed that serivec quality, price, and brand image influence purchasing decisions for Maxim online transportation services.

Sanctions and Russian online prices

This study leverages daily web-scraped data to evaluate the impact of economic sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on consumer prices and product availability across different goods categories. We find that international sanctions significantly disrupted Russian price dynamics, with the exchange rate serving as the primary transmission mechanism. Utilizing granular online data allows us to circumvent potential misreporting and track real-time economic indicators at high frequency. Our analysis uncovers heterogeneous effects across product groups, with sanctions associated with an average increase of 11.7 percentage points in the Russian CPI. The results highlight how trade policies and geopolitical events can rapidly propagate through retail markets, underscoring the importance of timely price monitoring during periods of economic turbulence. More broadly, we demonstrate the value of online data for evaluating policy shocks, paving the way for similar applications in other contexts.

Educative capital of online school students: searching for empirical referents

The article is about Russian online schools that issue state-issued certificates to graduates. The relevance of the study is related to the accelerated process of digitalization of education and the need to improve the quality of human capital. The authors present a methodological model for analyzing the educational capital received by students in online schools. Empirical referents, with the help of which it is possible to identify the structure of educational capital and analyze its most developed elements and deficit zones, are substantiated. It was possible to classify the developed indicators and divide them into six groups. Among the proposed indicators are academic performance, participation in Olympiads for schoolchildren, family educational capital, knowledge of foreign languages, computer literacy, profile and rating of schools, attendance at extracurricular activities. To understand the transmission of family educational resources, especially in the dynasties of technical specialists, not only the education and profession of the online school student's parents but also the education and professional activities of older generations of the family are taken into account. The list of referents is made to study the educative capital of online school students but it is also relevant to other groups of students. Indicators can be used in various types of empirical sociological and interdisciplinary research. In general, the methodological model is more suitable for the analysis of reflective technologies: representative polling, standardized questionnaires, focus groups, open-ended questionnaires, biographical interviews and other qualitative sociological methods. The results of the study are useful for various areas of social policy, as well as for evaluating the digital educational environment and distance learning methods at school.

Partial Mobilization: Tracking Multilingual Information Flows amongst Russian Media Outlets and Telegram

In response to disinformation and propaganda from Russian online media following the invasion of Ukraine, Russian media outlets such as Russia Today and Sputnik News were banned throughout Europe. To maintain viewership, many of these Russian outlets began to heavily promote their content on messaging services like Telegram. In this work, we study how 16 Russian media outlets interacted with and utilized 732 Telegram channels throughout 2022. Leveraging the foundational model MPNet, DP-Means clustering, and Hawkes processes, we trace how narratives spread between news sites and Telegram channels. We show that news outlets not only propagate existing narratives through Telegram but that they source material from the messaging platform. For example, across the websites in our study, between 2.3% (ura.news) and 26.7% (ukraina.ru) of articles discussed content that originated/resulted from activity on Telegram. Finally, tracking the spread of individual topics, we measure the rate at which news outlets and Telegram channels disseminate content within the Russian media ecosystem, finding that websites like ura.news and Telegram channels such as @genshab are the most effective at disseminating their content.

GreenRu: A Russian Dataset for Detecting Mentions of Green Practices in Social Media Posts

Green practices are social practices that aim to harmonize the relations between people and the natural environment. They may involve minimizing the use of resources and the generation of waste and emissions. Detecting green practices in social media posts helps to understand which green practices are currently common and to develop recommendations on the scaling of green practices to reduce environmental problems. This paper describes GreenRu, a novel Russian social media dataset for detecting the mentions of green practices related to waste management. It has a sentence-level markup and consists of 1326 posts collected in Russian online communities. The total number of mentions of green waste practices is 3765. The paper assessed the effectiveness of the multi-label and one-versus-rest BERT-based models for detecting the mentions of green practices in social media posts and compared several data augmentation methods in terms of both classification metrics and human evaluation. To augment the dataset, a backtranslation method and generative language models, such as RuGPT, RuT5, and ChatGPT, were used in this study. The results enable researchers to monitor the green waste practices on social networks and develop environmental policies. Additionally, GreenRu can support machine learning models to analyze social media content, assess the prevalence and effectiveness of green waste practices, and identify ways to expand them.

THE ON-LINE TURNOVER OF BIOLOGICALLY ACTIVE ADDITIVES. PART 2. CUSTOMS CONTROL FOR THE TURNOVER OF IMPORTED DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS ON MARKETPLACES AS A MEASURE TO PROTECT THE LIFE AND HEALTH OF CITIZENS

Various dietary supplements are used as prevention, and in some cases treatment, of a large number of pathological processes in the human body. The purchase of such dietary supplements on various online platforms, including marketplaces, as evidenced by the results of monitoring the Russian online market for 2021-2022, turned out to be the riskiest for human life and health: the components actually contained do not correspond to the declared ones, the presence of Dietary supplement of prohibited substances, lack of a state registration certificate, the presence of which confirms the safety of such dietary supplement for use. The listed violations in the conditions of complete lack of control during the sale of dietary supplements on marketplaces confirm the danger to health, and in some cases, to human life. Uncontrolled use of such products can lead to serious side effects and complications: allergic reactions, kidney failure, liver failure, complications from the gastrointestinal tract, nervous system and genitourinary tract. In this regard, issues related to ensuring the safety of human health and life in the event of their purchasing dietary supplements on marketplaces are relevant. The analysis carried out in the study confirmed the existence of a problem of unreliable declaration of imported dietary supplements on marketplaces by participants in foreign economic activity. In this regard, this article examines the requirements of technical regulations that must be observed when importing dietary supplements into the territory of the EAEU, studies in detail the issue of the possibility of selling imported dietary supplements on marketplaces, and formulates appropriate conclusions and recommendations for eliminating identified problems, which will eliminate possible sales of low-quality products on the marketplace. and prohibited products and identify sellers selling dietary supplements with violations.

Labour relations in the conditions of innovative development of the Russian Federation

The article provides information about priority directions for development of the information society in the Russian Federation. Based on the analysis of data from the Federal State Statistics Service on the indicators and costs of innovative activities of organisations for the period from 2010 to the present, the most and least active areas of innovative organisations are identified which emphasises the unevenness of innovation processes occurring in the country. The key role of investing in the innovative development of the country to ensure sustainable economic development and social stability of Russia is noted. An analysis of current trends in the labour market has recorded an increase in the importance of stability of the company in the market and type of employment as criteria for choosing an employer. A secondary analysis of research results obtained from the recruiting company Get Experts and from the research service of the Russian online recruiting platform HeadHunter made it possible to identify problems of job satisfaction in modern conditions, causes and manifestations of chronic fatigue among employees and employers, and causes of burnout in the workplace. On the basis of the findings, it was concluded that job satisfaction in the conditions of innovative development of the society depends on the extent to which employees can use new technologies and tools to improve their work, develop their skills and knowledge, and also to be involved in decision-making and the development of new ideas.

State of e-trade market development in the world and in Russia

The article provides an overview of the current state of development of the global e-commerce market, as well as an analysis of the Russian online sales market. Statistical data on the dynamics of international and Russian online sales are presented. The factors contributing to the development of the global e-commerce market, as well as factors slowing down the growth rate of this market in our country, are listed. The most popular marketplaces in Russia are listed and quantitative estimates of transactions made on them are indicated. In addition, further prospects for the development of the Russian e-commerce market are highlighted.

Лингвокультурное освоение заимствований в сетевом медиадискурсе как проявление процессов глокализации

The work analyzes some innovative phenomena in the Russian language as a manifestation of glocalization in the online media discourse. The article focuses on the phenomenon of linguacultural assimilation of borrowings, which consists in the lexical, word-formation, grammatical and linguapragmatic transformation of root or affix elements of foreign language origin in accordance with the original Russian models of language implementation of lexemes, word forms and pragmemes. This assimilation process reflects the principles of the linguistic conceptualization of the world characteristic of a particular nation. The purpose of the study is to describe the current linguistic, communicative, pragmatic, cognitive and discursive features of this process in the Russian online media discourse. The research is based on the principles of the cognitive and discursive approach, methods of integrative analysis of Internet communication, as well as on the ideas of pragmalinguistic description of the emotional and evaluative sphere of language signs. The language data of the newspaper corpus in the Russian National Corpus is analyzed. The features of acculturation of borrowings at the lexical and semantic, formal and grammatical levels of the language are described. Particular attention is paid to communicative and pragmatic cultural russification of foreign language elements, which lies in the fact that words with a foreign language component at a certain stage of their functioning expand the possible areas of use, going beyond the initially specialized area of use associated with the realities of computer technology, Internet communications and social networks. Based on the analysis of such lexemes as flud / fludit’, frend / frendit’, ban / banit’ (zabanit’), spam / spamit’ (zaspamit’), troll’ / trolit’ (zatrollit’), it is concluded that the reflexes of the language expansion of new formations with a foreign language component considered in the work contribute to increasing the expressive and linguacreative potential of the Russian language.

Applying explainable artificial intelligence methods to models for diagnosing personal traits and cognitive abilities by social network data

This study utilizes advanced artificial intelligence techniques to analyze the social media behavior of 1358 users on VK, the largest Russian online social networking service. The analysis comprises 753,252 posts and reposts, combined with Big Five personality traits test results, as well as assessments of verbal and fluid intelligence. The objective of this research is to understand the manifestation of psychological attributes in social media users' behavior and determine their implications on user-interaction models. We employ the integrated gradients method to identify the most influential feature groups. The partial dependence plot technique aids in understanding how these features function across varying severity degrees of the predicted trait. To evaluate feature stability within the models, we cluster calculated Shapley values. Our findings suggest that the emotional tone (joy, surprise, anger, fear) of posts significantly influences the prediction of three personality traits: Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness to Experience. Additionally, user social engagement metrics (such as friend count, subscribers, likes, views, and comments) correlate directly with the predicted level of Logical thinking. We also observe a trend towards provocative and socially reprehensible content among users with high Neuroticism levels. The theme of religion demonstrates a multidirectional relationship with Consciousness and Agreeableness. Further findings, including an analysis of post frequency and key text characteristics, are also discussed, contributing to our understanding of the complex interplay between social media behavior and psychological traits. The study proposes a transition from the analysis of correlations between psychological (cognitive) traits to the analysis of indicators of behavior in a social network that are significant for diagnostic models of the corresponding traits.

The Regional Labor Market in the Field of Tourism and the Hotel Industry in the Context of the Transformation of the Russian Economy

The relevance. The departure of foreign companies, combined with the growth of domestic demand, has created positive prerequisites for the development of domestic hotel chains and domestic tourism. These objective processes have led to the need to assess the labor market in the tourism and hotel industry in order to identify problems and ways to solve them with the increasing demand of enterprises in this field for qualified specialists. The purpose of the study is to study and analyze the current situation and problems in the labor market in the tourism and hotel industry of the Kursk region. The objectives were to assess the job market in the region, requests and offers from employers, the structure of vacancies and the activity of applicants. Methodology. The research methodology is based on the analysis of statistical information contained in the all-Russian federal database of vacancies and resumes of specialists in the tourism and hotel industry. Results. The data of Russian online recruitment platforms are analyzed and systematized. Based on the results of the analysis of the composition and structure of the labor market of specialists in the hospitality sector, the comparison of supply and demand indicators in it, the analysis of wages in the field under consideration and the dynamics of its change, measures were proposed, the implementation of which will ensure the sustainable development of the industry. Conclusions. Despite some problems and shortcomings in the hospitality sector of the Kursk region, this industry continues to develop and grow. With the growing number of tourists and an increase in the volume of services provided, the labor market in this area is becoming more competitive and attractive for qualified specialists. Regular monitoring of the labor market and analysis of changes in personnel qualification requirements will improve the quality of services provided and meet the growing demand for hospitality workers.

Multimodal business analytics: The concept and its application prospects in economic science and practice

One of the problems of business analysis is obtaining and processing an ever-increasing volume of economic, financial, organizational, political and legal data. Multimodal business analytics is a new methodology combining the methods of classical business analysis with big data technologies, intelligent business analytics, multimodal data fusion, artificial neural networks and deep machine learning. The purpose of the study is to determine the conceptual foundations of the phenomenon of multimodal business analytics and substantiate the prospects for its use in economic science and practice. Methodologically, the study rests on the systems approach, i.e., multimodal business analytics is examined as a unique integrated phenomenon comprised of several interrelated components. The evidence base covers research studies of 2000–2022 on multimodal business analytics from Scopus and the Russian online database eLibrary.ru. Empirical methods were used to collect and evaluate the dynamics of the number of relevant publications and their segmentation by subject areas. We have proposed own thesaurus and ontology of the key terms that make up the phenomenon of multimodal business analytics. It is shown that the use of the concept allows expanding the range of data, exposing hidden interrelations of organizational and economic phenomena and synthesizing fundamentally new information needed for effective decision-making in business.

Экспериментальное исследование региональных особенностей занятости женщин старших возрастов на цифровых трудовых платформах: кейс Республики Башкортостан

The article studies the peculiarities of the involvement of women of older age groups (45+) in platform employment. The aim of the research presented in the article is to study platform employment, which has become an integral part of the modern labor market and analyze the possibility of solving urgent employment problems for women of older age groups. The study was carried out on the data of the Republic of Bashkortostan, which allows us to consider the regional peculiarities of the involvement of women aged 45+ in platform employment. The research method is an experiment based on the application of the resume test method, which allows obtaining an objective and reliable assessment of employers’ perception of women of older age groups as potential employees. The study highlights the most popular professions for women’s platform employment. The most visited Russian online employment platforms were assessed; criteria of employers (customers) in the Republic of Bashkortostan of service providers on the online platform was analyzed. Based on the conducted research, it is concluded that there is a positive possibility of increasing women’s employment through employment through digital labor platforms that contribute to reducing negative age stereotypes, but only in sectors of the economy with an established system of social roles that play a value-based trust role in choosing a candidate.

Организация обучения русскому языку как иностранному в школах Азии, Африки и Латинской Америки на основе российского учебно-методического онлайн-комплекса как стратегия экспорта образования

The aim of the research is to substantiate the high relevance of expanding pre-university Russian language education programs abroad to increase the level of Russian higher education export in terms of boosting demand among young people from Asia, Africa and Latin America. The paper examines the current picture of pre-university forms of Russian teaching abroad and determines the most effective form; investigates the existing conditions for the implementation of this form in Asia, Africa and Latin America and identifies the type of Russian methodological support necessary for its scaling. The scientific novelty of the research lies in defining one of the key conditions for the successful expansion of pre-university Russian language teaching programs abroad that consists in the organization of teaching the subject “Russian language” in foreign schools through the implementation of digital methodological support in the form of a Russian online training package to assist countries that do not have long-term experience in the implementation of Russian as a foreign language training programs. As a result of the research, the prospects of promoting the inclusion of the subject “Russian language” in the programs of foreign schools as a second foreign language in Asia, Africa and Latin America have been substantiated, as this form of education contributes to the effective organization of pre-university Russian language learning and the creation of positive ideas about the scientific and technological development of Russia among schoolchildren, forming their motivation and communication competencies for admission and successful study in Russian universities.

Лингводидактический потенциал новостных текстов в профессионально ориентированном обучении русскому языку как иностранному курсантов военных вузов

The study aims to characterise the linguodidactic potential of news texts of modern Russian online media for foreign-language competence formation in foreign cadets in professionally oriented teaching of Russian as a foreign language. The paper describes the specifics of professionally oriented foreign-language teaching, characterises the features of foreign-language professional communicative competence of foreign cadets of military universities, examines the notion of the linguodidactic of the text in teaching Russian as a foreign language, sheds light on the aspects of this potential. The scientific novelty of the work lies in providing deep insight into the linguodidactic potential of online media news texts determined by their structural, content, functional and linguistic characteristics. As a result, it is stated that online media news reports have a significant educational (linguistic and communicative), developmental (cognitive and meta-subject) and educative (socio-cultural, moral, ethical and aesthetic) potential contributing to the formation and development of all aspects of foreign-language professional communicative competence in foreign cadets of military universities.

Online Equipment Repair Community in Russia: Searching for Environmental Discourse

Repair is recognized as an important part of the circular economy and leads to fewer resources being used, less waste, and less emissions generation. The crucial condition for scaling repairs is people’s perception of repairs as a significant social practice harmonizing the relationship between society and nature. This paper aims to analyze the key discourses of repair in the content of the posts of the biggest Russian online communities and to identify environmental discourse. These communities specialize in the repair of household appliances, IT, and telecommunications equipment and are organized by independent repairers. We collected all of the posts from the communities that contain textual information in the body of the post. Based on the analysis of the results of the theoretical discourses of repair, we identified four types of repair discourses: environmental, pedagogical, social, and the discourse of the right to repair. We formed lists of keywords corresponding to each discourse type and analyzed posts by computer processing. We concluded that the practice of repair is widespread in specialized online communities, but the content of these communities includes almost no mention of environmental discourse. Social and pedagogical discourses prevail. Based on our research results, we suggested some recommendations for greening and spreading repair.

Low Civility and High Incivility in Russian Online Deliberation

One of the most studied fields in deliberative research is (in)civility in Internet-based political discussions on issues of common concern. Uncivil behaviour demonstrated by participants in online communication has various forms and negative effects on the process and outcomes of e-deliberation as well as on deliberators’ reactions and attitudes, which have been predominantly investigated in Western democracies. However, this issue has been poorly covered in the countries with less stable democratic traditions and values. This paper explores speech culture with a focus on civility and incivility in Russian political conversations conducted on Russian social media. The authors analyse mass-scale web political discussions on a polarising issue of the court sentence of the politician Alexei Navalny (2021), taking one of the most popular Russian social networks VKontakte. For this study, scholars use discourse analysis based on the works on deliberative democracy proposed by J. Habermas (1996). They conclude that Russian political speech regarding Navalny’s sentence and conducted on the VKontakte social media platform can be characterised by a great extent of uncivil speech unbalanced by a low extent of civil speech. The conversations are not oriented towards mutual recognition or reaching a consensus, as participants are often distracted from the main issue being discussed, and turn to interpersonal topics instead.

The Russian registry of primary hyperparathyroidism, latest update.

Until recently no major epidemiological research of primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) has been conducted in the Russian Federation, this led to the creation of the Russian online registry. The objective of this study is to estimate the clinical and biochemical profile, classical and non-classical complications, surgical intervention and medical therapy of the patients with different forms of PHPT in the Russian Federation. The cross-sectional, observational, continuous study was conducted at the Endocrinology Research Centre (Moscow). The present study explored retrospective data from 6003 patients submitted to the Registry between 12.12.2016 and 25.10.2022 from 81 regions of the Russian Federation (http://pgpt.clin-reg.ru/). The median age was 59 [60; 66] years with a female:male ratio of 11.7:1. Symptomatic PHPT was observed in 74.3% while asymptomatic form - only in 25.7% of cases. Bone pathology was the predominant clinical manifestation in 62.5% of cases (n=2293), mostly in combination with visceral complications 45.7% (n=1676). The majority of patients (63.3%) had combined visceral disorders including kidney damage in 51.8% and gastroduodenal erosions/ulcers in 32.3% of patients. Symptomatic patients were older (60 [53; 67] vs. 54 [45; 62] years, p<0.001) and had more severe biochemical alterations of calcium-phosphorus metabolism. Cardiovascular disease (СVD) was recorded in 48% of patients, among them the most frequent was arterial hypertension (up to 93.9%). A genetic test was conducted in 183 cases (suspicious for hereditary PHPT) revealing the mutations in MEN1, CDC73, RET genes in 107, 6 and 2 cases, respectively. Surgery was performed in 53.4% of patients with remission achievement in 87%, the relapse/persistence were recorded in 13% of cases. Histological examination revealed carcinoma in 4%, atypical adenoma in 2%, adenoma in 84% and hyperplasia in 11% of cases. Drug therapy was prescribed in 54.0% of cases, most often cholecalciferol. The detection rate of PHPT has increased in the Russian Federation in recent years. This increase is associated with the start of online registration. However, the majority of patients remain symptomatic with significant alterations of phosphorus-calcium metabolism that indicates delayed diagnosis and requires further modifications of medical care.