Social Media-based Research of Interpersonal and Group Communication in Russia

Abstract

AbstractRapidly proliferating social media not only serve as a new channel of human communication but also open up research opportunities to ask a wider set of questions about political, sociological and psychological factors that influence interpersonal and group online communication, development and maintenance of personal networks and the growth or decline of social capital. In this chapter we discuss the research opportunities provided by new survey, observational and experimental data that may be obtained from a social networking site. For doing so, we refer to Russian-language social networking sites (SNS) or SNS segments, notably VKontakte as the most popular SNS in Russia. We demonstrate how the aforementioned types of data may or have already been used to address research tasks from a number of disciplines.