Social Network VKontakte Research Articles

Возможности социальных сетей в исследовании особенностей трудовой маятниковой миграции городов-миллионников России

Commuting as a feature of agglomeration processes, and its examination in the context of spatial development becomes relevant. Simultaneously, considering the limited availability of official municipal statistics, new data sources for such a research are necessary. The study aims to explore the possibility of using open data from VKontakte social network to identify and analyse commuting in 14 Russian million-plus cities (agglomeration centres) and 97 settlements (satellites). It is hypothesised that the outflow of labour from a million-plus city is comparable to the influx of labour from satellite cities to replace this outflow. The methods of social media analytics, correlation and comparative analysis, cartographic techniques were applied. The Federal State Statistics Service data and anonymous VKontakte user data obtained in the spring of 2023 were analysed using the author’s computer programme. The analysis showed that the higher the share of citizens of million-plus cities working outside their city, the lower the average share of residents of satellite cities working in agglomeration centres. A negative correlation between the distance from a city of residence to an agglomeration centre and the share of the commuting population was revealed. This finding confirms the presence of a gravity criterion used to determine the boundaries of urban agglomerations according to gravity models. Additionally, a positive correlation between the labour market tension and the share of residents of satellite cities working in agglomeration centres was noted. It was concluded that social media data provides new opportunities for identifying and assessing commuting flows. The research results can be used to further study commuting features, intensity and directions in order to take them into account when creating spatial development strategies.

The study of labor pendulum migration using big data processing technologies and the capabilities of the VKontakte social network

Official statistical data do not allow estimating the magnitude of labor pendulum migration in the context of regions and municipalities on a regular basis. The purpose of this research was to study the possibility of using open data of the VKontakte social network to identify and analyze labor pendulum migration on the example of Ekaterinburg and 12 satellite cities. Depersonalized information of users of the VKontakte social network and Rosstat data acted as empirical data. The research established a connection between the distance from the city of residence to Ekaterinburg and the proportion of citizens-users of the VKontakte network included in the process of pendulum labor migration. The analysis of incoming and outgoing flows of labor pendulum migration showed that despite significant differentiation by cities, in all cities the outgoing flow of labor migrants to Ekaterinburg exceeded the incoming one. The results of the research can be used in the analysis of the features, intensity and directions of pendulum migration for their consideration in the elaboration of strategic documents in the field of spatial development of territories. Further research by the authors will be aimed at improving the methodology for studying migration processes that occur between cities of millions and satellite cities, in order to identify agglomeration effects using big data technologies.

Способы выражения общественного настроения в текстах интернет-сообщества политической направленности социальной сети «ВКонтакте»

The article discusses the most typical ways of expressing public mood that are employed by the participants in discussions in a politically-oriented Internet community. Public mood is understood as a form of mass political consciousness’ existence. The study was conducted on the material of texts posted in the Politika (Politics) community of the VKontakte social network from September 21, 2022 to January 6, 2023. On the basis of the Internet posts and comments to them, the research revealed the preferences of Internet users in choosing the pragmatic type of utterance. The pragmatic type is determined by the predominance of a certain component of public moods (emotional, rational, or rational-emotional). The correspondence between the prevailing type of the Internet users’ reaction and the pragmatic type of utterance was established taking into account the speech act theory developed by J. Austin and J. Searle and the typology of speech acts proposed by N. I. Formanovskaya. The paper points out the predominance of the emotive dominant in the structure of the Russian-speaking Internet users’ public attitudes. It is realized in the employment of mostly rogative, directive, and representative speech acts in the texts under analysis. Other types of speech acts (expressives, contactives) mainly implement the phatic function of communication in the Internet community. The paper concludes that the use of the identified types of speech acts contributes to the expression of subjective experiences of the community members. It also allows the authors of the texts to propose their own scenarios for the development of the political situation under discussion and to influence the formation of attitudes of other Vkontakte users.

METHODOLOGY "DISTRIBUTED AUTHORSHIP IN SOLVING PRACTICAL SITUATIONS" FOR THE SYSTEM OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The article is devoted to the problem of improving the quality of training of highly qualified specialists using simple and understandable tools for everyone. The purpose of the article is to present the methodology "Distributed authorship in solving practical situations (RAVTOR-case)", designed to increase the quality of professional development of specialists. The hypothesis is the assumption about the effectiveness of using traditional tools of social networks and messengers for the collective creation of educational materials that facilitate the exchange of students' experience. The methodology consists in the development of problem situations (cases), options for their solutions, posted according to the recommendations on the VKontakte social network, inviting students to develop solutions to situations and commenting, evaluating solutions, motivating students to various actions for the exchange of experience, rating the authors of educational materials. The teaching material in the methodology recognizes the totality of the results of the activity of the teacher and students (case study, comments, comments to comments, assessments, reposts, likes). Practical testing of the developed methodology was carried out at advanced training courses with the participation of 303 teachers of Russian universities in the period from 17.10 to 15.11.2022. The result of the approbation was the creation of 13 cases, 4328 views of the created cases, 276 case solutions, 108 comments on case solutions, 210 assessments of the actions of the training participants, which significantly exceeds the set learning objectives and the average activity of social users. The author provides a justification for the effectiveness of the developed methodology for training highly qualified specialists in courses of additional professional education.

Мифологизация советского прошлого в социальной сети «ВКонтакте» через тридцать лет после распада СССР

Мифологизация советского прошлого в социальной сети «ВКонтакте» через тридцать лет после распада СССР

О центростремительной тенденции в комментировании новостей в социальных сетях

The article considers the ratio of centripetal and centrifugal tendencies in online commenting. The research objective was to describe the consistency of comments to news texts published in social networks. This article focuses on the results obtained on the centripetal trend. The approach and methodology were based on the scientific hypothesis about the self-developing nature of communication in social networks. According to this hypothesis, the degree of subjectivity of online news discussion can be transmitted to the dialogue through the text of its comments. The original news text becomes the basis for comments, which are independent texts focused on the original news. As a result, the original text turns into a complex branched network. Comments develop as chains or branches of discussion responses, which can be analyzed. This research featured an Internet text from the Vkontakte social network, its comments, and their mental map. The ratio of centripetal and centrifugal tendencies revealed a certain pattern: the consistency of the original text determined the consistency of comments. The patterns of their correlation showed how the self-developing nature of communication created new linguistic phenomena. The article is of interest to specialists in Internet communication and social networks.

Экспликация категории тональности в текстах виртуального жанра

The research dealt with the category of tonality explicated in the texts of virtual communication. It featured the official community of students, graduates, academics, and employees of the Ural State Law University in the Vkontakte social network. The research objective was to identify the specifics of tonality in the communicative and pragmatic aspects of the virtual genre. The method of categorical-textual analysis revealed the types of tonality that made up the tonal field of virtual communication, as well as their linguistic explication means at the lexical, morphological, syntactic, and graphical levels. A specific transformation of tonal varieties proved to be a characteristic feature of the hybrid virtual genre: it combined a monologue text and a reflective commentary on it. The neutral and benevolent tonalities of the monologue tonal core were complemented by peripheral varieties of the commentary text with pleading and disapproving tonalities. In the commentary texts, the tonality of benevolence remained in the core, while the neutral tonality became peripheral. The communicative and pragmatic solution was evaluated as positive when the tonality in the tonal core of monologue texts and comments was benevolent, or when the neutral tonality of the monologue text turned benevolent in the commentary. These tactics yielded a positive perception of the information presented by the sender of the message.

Prospects for the development of single-industry towns in the Russian Arctic

Currently single-industry Arctic towns are facing a number of troublesome demographic trends: decline in the share of youth in the population structure, ageing of the population and reduction of the labor force in the labor market, general depopulation particularly characteristic of sparsely populated settlements. Concentration of people in big cities and "dying" of small towns in the Arctic are accompanied by huge demographic changes and increasing migration. Our study allows a comprehensive approach to studying 18 single-industry Arctic towns and settlements of the Russian Federation. The research is based on the methodology for assessment of demographic potential of territories developed by RAS Corresponding Member N. M. Rimashevskaya. Statistical data on single-industry Arctic towns and settlements was accumulated from Rosstat open sources for the period 2011-2020. These data concerned mainly demography, migration and labor market. Analysis of vacancies at three leading recruiting agencies of the Russian Federation — trudvsem, superjob, headhunter — helped to identify top-5 occupations in the Arctic single-industry towns. The occupations in demand were represented by both the number of vacancies the range of wages. Arctic residents' problems in 18 Arctic towns over the past year (starting from January 2021) were also analyzed via social networks. About 50 groups of VKontakte social network were examined to identify the main problems of concern to Arctic residents. These concerns can be divided into 3 types — social, economic and environmental. There are also some positive practices in the Arctic single-industry towns and settlements, such as volunteering and career guidance that gives hope for continuation of life there. In conclusion, there are put forward proposals to improve the system of management of sustainable development and modernization of the single-industry Arctic towns.

Classification of Russian Texts by Genres Based on Modern Embeddings and Rhythm

The article investigates modern vector text models for solving the problem of genre classification of Russian-language texts. Models include ELMo embeddings, BERT language model with pre-training and a complex of numerical rhythm features based on lexico-grammatical features. The experiments were carried out on a corpus of 10,000 texts in five genres: novels, scientific articles, reviews, posts from the social network Vkontakte, news from OpenCorpora. Visualization and analysis of statistics for rhythm features made it possible to identify both the most diverse genres in terms of rhythm: novels and reviews, and the least ones: scientific articles. Subsequently, these genres were classified best with the help of rhythm features and the neural network-classifier LSTM. Clustering and classifying texts by genre using ELMo and BERT embeddings made it possible to separate one genre from another with a small number of errors. The multiclassification F-score reached 99%. The study confirms the efficiency of modern embeddings in the tasks of computational linguistics, and also allows to highlight the advantages and limitations of the complex of rhythm features on the material of genre classification.

Detecting Mentions of Green Practices in Social Media Based on Text Classification

The paper is devoted to the task of searching for mentions of green practices in social media texts. The relevance of this task is dictated by the need to expand existing knowledge about the use of green practices in society and the spread of existing green practices. This paper uses a text corpus consisting of the texts published on the environmental communities of the VKontakte social network. The corpus is equipped with an expert markup of the mention of nine types of green practices. As part of this work, a semi-automatic approach is proposed to the collection of additional texts to reduce the class imbalance in the corpus. The approach includes the following steps: detecting the most frequent words for each practice type; automatic collecting texts in social media that contain the detected frequent words; expert verification and filtering of collected texts. The four machine learning models are compared to find the mentions of green practices on the two variants of the corpus: original and augmented using the proposed approach. Among the listed models, the highest averaged F1-score (81.32%) was achieved by Conversational RuBERT fine-tuned on the augmented corpus. Conversational RuBERT model was chosen for the implementation of the application prototype. The main function of the prototype is to detect the presence of the mention of nine types of green practices in the text. The prototype is implemented in the form of the Telegram chatbot.

Social Memory and Formation of Urban Identity of the Regional Capital City (on the Example of Saransk)

The subject of the study is the formation of urban identity based on group reflection on the past and present. The article summarizes the results of in-depth interviews with the experts and online observation of the thematic communities in the social network VKontakte, dedicated to the visual history of Saransk — the capital of the Republic of Mordovia and focusing on the late Soviet period as the era of its transformation into a major city, revealing the specific features of the social identity of the population of the republican capital, as well as the social functions of virtual urban communities as “assemblage points” of urban identity. Considering Saransk nostalgic communities in “new media” as a specific form of digitalization in modern “public history” and visualization of social memory, the author analyzes symbolic communication and manifestation of collective emotions of their members in modes of collective trauma and nostalgia. Author specifies the basic functions of nostalgic communities: the construction of cultural trauma of the social changes, promoting comprehension of responsibility for development of a city and stimulation of civil activity, formation of a complete image of a city in space and in time, identification of users with the generalized image of the city and urban community.

Representation of Urban Myth-Making in Social Media

The article is devoted to the problems of representation of urban myth-making in social networks. The purpose of the study is to identify the specifics of the representation of urban myth-making in social networks on the example of myth-making activity in the cities of the Volga region. As part of the research, materials published in groups of the VKontakte social network over the past 10 years were studied. In the article, urban myth-making is understood as the process of creating legends reflecting the historical and cultural peculiarity of a particular city. As a result of this research, common characteristic features and distinctive qualities of the myth-making of the cities of the Volga region were identified, directly related to their history, the contingent of the population and the type of its activity. When analyzing the material of the social network, it was revealed that the development of urban myth-making bears the imprint of the peculiarities of the perception of historical events, urban objects, and specific personalities by the population, which are reflected in the images of local legends created. The article is addressed to researchers of the humanitarian field of myth-making activity, as well as to a wide audience of readers interested in this topic.

Columbine as a type of youth destructivism

Objective: to analyze the reasons for senior schoolchildren’s interest to destructive social groups dedicated to challenges, criminal culture, weapons, erotic and sex, dangerous leisure, death and suicide, mass killings and violence, and drugs; to describe the hierarchy of interests and life values of adolescents based on the research results (questionnaire survey of schoolchildren and multidimensional content analysis of VKontakte social network).Methods: general scientific (analysis, system-structural approach to the analysis of the research object, comparative-legal method) and specific scientific methods (questionnaire survey of schoolchildren, N = 589, conducted in April 2021, and multidimensional content analysis of VKontakte social network, 314,708 fragments).Results: the interests of schoolchildren to various groups in social networks were analyzed. The determinants of joining groups are factors such as the degree of trust in relationships with parents, plans for the future, the amount of time spent daily on the Internet, the tendency to hedonism in everyday life. The methods of involving adolescents in the destructive ideology of the Columbine movement were revealed.Scientific novelty: two groups of users of sites propagating the destructive ideology of Columbine movement were identified: the core (characterized by the abundance of negative moods, these social network users are potentially capable of committing terrorist acts) and the periphery (characterized by an increased general interest in extreme leisure activities). The hierarchy of interests and life values of representatives of the core and the periphery is described; assumptions are made about the ways and reasons for the flow of users from the core to the periphery and back. The study showed that the breeding ground for Columbine and other destructive youth network movements are the adolescents who do not have trust relationships with their parents, are aimed at enjoying life here and now, do not have clear plans for the future, and prefer virtual communication to real one.Practical significance: the materials of the article can be useful to federal and regional authorities in implementing various aspects of youth policy, preventing sociopathic behavior of the youth, ensuring the safety of educational institutions, as well as to scientists researching destructive youth network movements.

Средства авторизации и адресации в речи интернет-эксперта (на материале экспертных блогов в социальной сети «ВКонтакте»)

Statement of the problem. This article discusses the means of authorization and addressing used by Internet experts when writing blogs – one of the top forms of Internet communication today. Review of scientific literature on the problem. The scientific basis of the research is the works devoted to the study of linguistic personality and sematic syntax. The author of the article focuses his attention on the modus part due to the fact that this aspect is less studied in comparison with the dictum. Purpose of the article is to identify indicators of authorization and addressing on the language material, including the posts of 25 expert blogs, collected using the method of continuous sampling in the social network VKontakte. The methodology (materials and methods). For the analysis of the selected material, descriptive analytical and comparative methods were also used. Research results showed the importance of subjective categories for expert blogging. Depending on the goals of the author and the target audience, Internet experts use various means of authorization and addressing.

ИССЛЕДОВАНИЕ ОСОЗНАННОСТИ И ЦЕЛЕНАПРАВЛЕННОСТИ ДЕЙСТВИЙ ПО РАЗМЕЩЕНИЮ ТЕКСТОВ В СОЦИАЛЬНЫХ СЕТЯХ В ХОДЕ СУДЕБНОЙ КОМПЛЕКСНОЙ ПСИХОЛОГО-ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКОЙ ЭКСПЕРТИЗЫ

In this study, we consider a possible set of operations and actions of a forensic expert to investigate the actions of an under investigation/defendant in cases related to extremist articles. The article uses the experience of forensic expert practice carried out on the basis of the Decisions of the investigation or court. Modern research in the field of complex forensic psychological and linguistic expertise in cases of extremist orientation is faced with the problem of determining the motives of subjects who carry out actions that fall under the signs of articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation of extremist orientation related to calls for extremist actions, propaganda of extremist and terrorist ideas, justifications of terrorism, as well as public actions, aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in order to protect the interests of the Russian Federation and its citizens, maintain international peace and security, or exercise their powers by state bodies of the Russian Federation for these purposes and other acts. Difficulties are primarily related to materials in which the place of commission of the offense is the social networks VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, etc. In these cases, we often deal with such a specific communicative act as a repost. In the case of a repost, as a social action in social networks, the judicial investigation does not deal with the author of the text material, but with the subject who transferred this material to other persons, i.e., the subsequent placement of the material from the author on his electronic page on the social network. And here the court has a question: what is the target orientation of the defendant's actions? It can be an act of random, unmotivated action, but it can be a conscious and purposeful act.

Online social network user performance prediction by graph neural networks

Online social networks provide rich information that characterizes the user’s personality, his interests, hobbies, and reflects his current state. Users of social networks publish photos, posts, videos, audio, etc. every day. Online social networks (OSN) open up a wide range of research opportunities for scientists. Much research conducted in recent years using graph neural networks (GNN) has shown their advantages over conventional deep learning. In particular, the use of graph neural networks for online social network analysis seems to be the most suitable. In this article we studied the use of graph convolutional neural networks with different convolution layers (GCNConv, SAGEConv, GraphConv, GATConv, TransformerConv, GINConv) for predicting the user’s professional success in VKontakte online social network, based on data obtained from his profiles. We have used various parameters obtained from users’ personal pages in VKontakte social network (the number of friends, subscribers, interesting pages, etc.) as their features for determining the professional success, as well as networks (graphs) reflecting connections between users (followers/ friends). In this work we performed graph classification by using graph convolutional neural networks (with different types of convolution layers). The best accuracy of the graph convolutional neural network (0.88) was achieved by using the graph isomorphism network (GIN) layer. The results, obtained in this work, will serve for further studies of social success, based on metrics of personal profiles of OSN users and social graphs using neural network methods.

The relationship of socio-cultural values and psychological problems in high school students (based on the material of social networks)

Introduction. The socio-cultural values of high school students, presented in social network profiles, are arranged in a certain hierarchy, and reflect patterns and norms of behavior characteristic of youth mass culture, which can influence the regulation of their real behavior, including the specifics of experiencing psychological problems. This influence can be both positive and negative, which underlines the relevance of the study of the relationship of socio-cultural values and psychological problems in high school students on the material of social networks. The purpose of the study: identification of the relationship of socio-cultural values and psychological problems in high school students reflected in the profile of the social network. Materials and methods. The study of the socio-cultural values of high school students was conducted using the method of automated collection of open information from the profile page in the social network VKontakte, followed by content analysis; the study of psychological problems of high school students in a virtual environment was conducted using the CIAS test (Chen's Internet addiction scale, adapted by V. L. Malygin, K. A. Feklisov), in real communication with using the methodology "Psychological problems of adolescents" (L. A. Regush et al.). The sample consisted of 143 high school students (82 girls and 61 boys), aged 15 to 17 years (cf. age = 15.8). Methods of mathematical statistics: content analysis, methods of descriptive statistics, correlation analysis. The results of the study. The socio-cultural values of high school students reflected in the profiles of social networks include orientation to the search for new experiences, hedonism, cultural and socio-political values, values of cognition. The leading socio-cultural values are arranged in a certain hierarchy, reflect patterns and norms of behavior characteristic of youth mass culture that can influence the regulation of their real behavior, including the specifics of experiencing psychological problems. It was revealed that the predominance of entertainment content indicates the risk of Internet addiction (r=0,44; p<0,001), interest in socio-political issues is associated with fear of the future (r=0,45; p<0,001). Cognitive content, the presence of groups dedicated to social and cultural issues are a resource for reducing the risk of Internet addiction (r=-0,46; p<0,001), and problematic interaction with peers (r=-0,46; p<0,001), due to an increase in the range of available communication practices. Conclusion. The data obtained can be used by psychologists working in the education system to develop recommendations for optimizing the process of using information technology, as well as for express diagnostics of Internet addiction and problematic preoccupation of high school students.

Analysis of the representation of environmental issues in the social networks of regional Internet media

A quantitative analysis of environmental content was carried out in the profile groups of social networks of regional Internet media, specifically in the social network VKontakte, popular among young people. An attempt to measure the degree of involvement of the media audience in the environmental issues of the region is presented, an assessment of social reflection on environmental texts is given. The dynamics (through likes, reposts and comments) of social well-being, typical for the audience of regional online media, has been revealed. The most popular resources were used as empirical material - the online publications “74.ru” and “1obl.ru.” A theoretical review of sources on the issue under study, including the work of domestic and foreign scientists of various specialties, is presented. Qualitative results have been achieved: linguistic features of text construction, reflecting the audience's reaction to environmental events, have been identified. The novelty of the study lies in the chosen approach and perspective of the problem, in the combination of methods used to collect data, in particular, a comparative analysis of the presentation of environmental information in official media sources and their representation in social networks was carried out. The main conclusion obtained in the course of the study is that the ecotexts of an environmentally problematic region do not provide high user involvement, while they indirectly express behavioral intentions, audience reactions, including social well-being.

Semantic Study of Materials on Extremism-Related Crimes through Data from the National Corpus of the Russian Language (Case Study of Comments on the Social Network VKontakte)

The article concentrates on the study of the well-known call-slogan Beet the Jews, save Russia, which was published as a comment to the text in the social network "VKontakte". In the course of a preliminary study, it was found that this statement contains linguistic signs of motivation in the form of a call for active action against a group of people. However, it is not possible to say unequivocally which group of people these actions should be aimed at, since in the analyzed context (text-stimulus + text-reaction) it is possible to have a double understanding of the noun жид ‘Jew, Kike, Yid’: a group of people in relation to their nationality or a group of people, with which the greedy deputy is associated. To answer the question of whether the noun жид could really be used by the author of the disputed text in the meaning of a 'greedy person', data from the Russian national corpus were analyzed in the period from 2002 (herein Law N 114-FZ "On Couneraction of Extimist Fctivities" was enacted) through 2021. Linguistic analysis of the controversial text, analysis of the comments of the author of the controversial text to other stimulus texts, data from the Russian national corpus led to the conclusion that in the analyzed commentary the noun жид is used in the meaning of ‘Jew’. Consequently, the controversial text contains linguistic signs of expressing several types of meaning: humiliation of a group of persons in relation to their nationality; an inherent threat that poses a danger not to the addressee, but to third parties (Jews); inducements in the form of a call for violent actions against a group of persons in relation to their nationality.

Blending in Internet Communication: Linguistic and Creative Aspect (“VKontakte” Social Network)

Network blends, occasional neoplasms posted by users of the social network VKontakte under the hashtag #Slovarevo, are studied in a linguo-creative aspect. The main provisions of the theory of blending are formulated as a way of game word formation, which has become widespread in the modern communicative space in general and in the Internet environment in particular. The cognitive foundations of linguo-creativity of blending and the basic principles of conceptual integration that ensure the effective functioning of blends are determined. Structural types of blends are identified, reflecting the main formal methods of constructing contaminants in the network space. The predominance of haplological blends in the illustrative material, inheriting the original words in full and facilitating the decoding of contaminants, has been established. The main mechanisms of the language game based on blending are analyzed, reflecting the high level of metalinguistic reflection of the users of the social network “Vkontakte” involved in punning word formation. Linguistic and creative activity in the Internet environment is characterized in terms of interactivity, interaction between the addresser and the addressee. Cases of communicative failures in the interpretation of blends in the absence of contextual support and the possibility of discursive deployment of their semantics are considered. The implementation of the linguo-creative potential of network blends was assessed based on the triad “forgetive — creative — pseudo-creative”.