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Orthodox Online Communities in Social Russian Nets As an Object of Social Research
The leader among existing social nets in Russia and Russian-speaking area is VKontakte.
In the social net of VKontakte there is an orthodox audience which consists of approximately 10% on the part of active audience of this social net. The most active and numerous representatives of the orthodox audience are three age groups which expose relevant portraits of the orthodox audience in VKontakte: up to 18, 18-24, 25-34 years old.
Communities in the social net is main communicative core around which users’ interests are formed. For our purpose all orthodox communities in VKontakte can be divided into four groups: communities of general orthodox theme, communities where the main content is presented by the quotations of reverend fathers and modern members of clergy, and also parables and cautionary tales, issue-related communities (question to priests, for youth, family, devoted to beneficence, etc.), and at last territorially united communities (the communities of bishoprics, youth orthodox unions of certain district, etc.)
Each orthodox group in VKontakte and its own unique target audience on the basis of which the group administration chooses content: by format (articles, news, fillers, quotations), by form (text, photo, audio, video), by the functionality of VKontakte social net (discussions, meetings).
In orthodox communities VKontakte the model of social interaction ‘online-offline’ is actively developed. Within the framework of this model the participants of communities are informed about offline events running (rapidly erected temples buildings, beneficence, meetings with interesting people, etc.) via VKontakte functionality (messages, meetings). Due to communities participants high degree of loyalty the information about future events is spread by ‘virus’ method by the means of likes and repost system.