THE RANGE OF COMMUNICATION TOPICS OF THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED IN THE INTERNET COMMUNITIES

Purpose of the study: This study discusses questions associated with the analysis of the most relevant communication topics of sight-disabled people in the Internet communities. According to the World Health Organization, there are about 1.3 billion people worldwide who live with a form of vision disorder. For solving a broad range of social problems of the sight-disabled, interest-based virtual social communities are created in the global internet network. By analyzing the content of these communities, one can judge about the most relevant topics of interest for sight-disabled people. Methodology: In this work, search and study of the Internet communities of sight-disabled people have been conducted in the VK (Russia)] social network. Using the Popsters service of analytics of social network posts and pages, the authors have analyzed the content of the said communities and identified the most relevant topics for this category of citizens. In the research, the hypothesis was used about a stable and significant statistical relation existing between the activity of users in the Internet communities associated with a particular topic and the level of significance of the selected topic for them. Main Findings: The development of information and communication technologies promotes socialization and integration of sight-disabled people into the civic society. The Internet communities of sight-disabled people focused on various topics are registered in the VK social network. The state has to more extensively support and develop technologies contributing to socialization and integration of sight-disabled people into the civic society. Applications of this study: The research findings can be of interest for specialists dealing with problems of socialization and social adaptation of people having vision limitations. Novelty/Originality of this study: It has been found that the Internet communities with the user-supplemented content have the highest quantity of users registered. The topics range of posts in these Internet communities is quite diverse. Posts asserting the traditional life principles: compassion, assistance, overcoming difficulties – win the highest users' response

Information Security and Online Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Relevance of the problem in question is associated with academics facing information threats in the virtual educational environment during the COVID-19 pandemic and the short-term transition of the education process to distance learning. We aim to analyze information threats to individuals in the Runet virtual educational environment and suggest measures to neutralize them. Research into this problem relies on a structural and comparative analysis as the theoretical approach. The empirical method of exploring this problem is an Internet-based study of user engagement in the Runet, focusing on cases in question and identifying the content that is most popular with the users. A classification of the current information threats is provided, and mechanisms for the elimination of emerging threats are discussed. Although Russia puts considerable effort, at the legislative level, into the prevention of malevolent information actions on academics, a number of particularities of virtual social environments allow for partial implementation of the measures only. The results may be of interest for specialists dealing with challenges of modern education, information warfare, information security of virtual social environments

Social and political portrait of contemporary Russian student youth

The paper is dedicated to the analysis of the social and political portrait of the contemporary Russian young students. The empirical basis of the work is made up by the results of sociological monitoring of the young students' ideas about social and political processes, socialization institutions and youth policy subjects conducted by the authors (in 2013 – 2017) as well as by the results of the "Social portrait of a contemporary Russian student" research (at the faculty of sociology of Lomonosov Moscow State University, 2017). The research technique was based on polling, with questionnaire survey selected as the research method. The questionnaire form contained questions aimed at finding out the students' political, ideological and moral values, their attitude toward the current power institutions, mass information media, religious denominations, public organizations and social work. The students also had to answer questions on the condition of the Russian state and society, any positive and negative phenomena existing among the young people; they evaluated the security of Russia and the effectiveness of the state youth policy. In the end, it has been found out that generally students evaluate the condition of today's Russian state and society in a sensible and critical way, realize the causes of crisis phenomena, and are prepared to take active part in social work. According to the results of analysis of the studies conducted, the necessity is noted of actively assisting the young people in fulfillment of their patriotic impulse and the capacity available