The concepts of "Network and virtual community"

The emergence of the phenomenon of network communities is due to the transition from an industrial society to a post-industrial one. One of the key criteria for this transition is the transition from bureaucratic relations as the dominant form to social networks. The network structure, in contrast to its bureaucratic prototype, is often a system with a decentralized hierarchy, a wide range responsibility, formal relations in which fade into the background.

The Internet space includes not only computer networks and information integration, but, first of all, people interconnected and actively functioning in this space, along with information products of their activity, often formed under the influence of requests, needs and interests in virtual interaction. In the network space, a certain social reality of a new order is being constructed, which includes in its sphere not only formally existing groups, but also the interaction of socio-professional norms and values, the reproduction organizational structure Internet communities (including the organizational production of professional communities, the definition of professional status, the development of processes of intra-group mego- and micro-structuring).

Network formations play the role of a kind of superstructure over objective realities, act as a qualitatively different form of organizing communication between various socio-economic institutions, creating a different, parallel space. The psychological explanation of the network community phenomenon lies in the fact that network structures satisfy people's needs for social security, personal, informal relationships, and a sense of group identity. On their basis, a new type of socio-professional groups is being formed.

A social network is defined as any group of people interacting and sharing social ties. This kind of interaction necessarily requires the unity of the space in which the interaction takes place, including cyberspace, therefore ("social network"), in relation to the Internet environment, the concepts of "network community" and "social network" ("social network") can be perceived as synonyms.

The term "Virtual Community" arose during the development of the Internet and means:

A new type of communities that arise and function in the electronic space.

Association of network users into groups with common interests to work in the electronic space.

The definition, in my opinion, is quite accurate. However, “there are two fundamentally different interpretations of the virtual community. Supporters of the first of them believe that the community is everyone who uses the Internet to communicate. Although only a small part of its members ever intersect on the Web, and, therefore, they do not enter into interpersonal interaction, they learn a common discourse and are carriers of a common virtual culture. That is why they are united in the community.

According to another point of view, a virtual community is a local network of people actually interacting on the Internet, using one or another means of communication that is common to the whole group. They are united in a community on the principle of more or less constant contacts, which are the result of a common interest for them. This understanding of the virtual community is consistent with the classical definition of a social network (or network community), in which the network is represented as a finite set of actors and relationships between them. From this position, in the virtual space there is not one, but a lot of virtual communities, they spontaneously arise, exist for some time and die if the resources that feed them are exhausted.

I believe that the second point of view is more justified, if only because the total set of Internet users communicating through the network cannot be singled out into a community based on any common interest. Otherwise, the line between the concepts of community and society is erased, as a general set of individuals without dividing them according to their interests.

Thus, a virtual community is a number of people who regularly communicate via a network (for example, the Internet) on topics of interest to them using certain means of virtual communication. A virtual community can exist only if there are common interests of the participants in communication, as well as if there are living and interesting topics for discussion.

Spreading social networks, along with the virtually universal replacement of television by the Internet, has become one of the twenty-two major trends of the first decade of the twenty-first century according to Forbes magazine. The audience of the most popular social network in 2010 was about 500 million people. At the same time, less than ten percent of the world's population is registered on Facebook, and in China the social network is completely blocked.

Definition of “social network”

A social network is (the dictionary of sociological concepts defines it this way) a structure consisting of an array of nodes that are represented by social objects (people, groups or organizations) and the relationships between them. The term, which later became widespread in many areas of the humanities, was coined by John Barnes in 1954. The study of society as a close interweaving of social connections and configurations (that is, from sociology and psychology) began as early as the thirties of the twentieth century.

Modern interpretation of the term

With the advent of the Internet, the concept has expanded significantly. Now a social network is a resource created with the aim of introducing and providing communication to people with similar interests or social connections. There are several types of such sites, many of which differ in their characteristic features. So, a social network is (we considered the definition above) a website designed to organize and reflect social relations between people.

Technologies that made it possible to realize the idea of ​​social networks

The history of the development of social networks is by no means limited to modern giants, who confidently hold a leading position. The first social network (this is a web resource that at that time was based on technology Email) appeared back in 1971. The then ARPA Net was used exclusively by the military.

Seventeen years later, a Japanese student named Yarko Oikarinen invented the Internet Relay Chat technology, which allows real-time communication. A landmark event in the history of the emergence and development of social networks was the invention of the Internet as such and its further opening to the general public.

The history of the emergence and distribution of Internet resources

The first social network in the modern sense - Classmates.com - was created by Randy Conrad in 1995. The concept of searching for your classmates on the Web turned out to be very popular, so from that moment on, the active distribution of such projects began. The Classmates.com resource itself remains very popular to this day. The site has over fifty million registered users.

The ubiquity of social networks began with the advent of Facebook in 2004. Within a few years, the site confidently breaks records in terms of attendance and the number of active users. The starting point modern stage development of the Internet, where social networks occupy an extremely important niche, we can consider the publication of the article Tim O'Reilly - What Is Web 2.0 (Web 2.0, 2005), which describes the information space that has developed in today's realities.

Subspecies and classification of social networks

Today's social network is a very, very broad concept, in connection with which attempts have been repeatedly made to systematize this kind of resources. Unified classification for this moment and no, and the most common includes the systematization of social networks according to the following criteria:

By type: personal and business communication, photo, audio and video content, entertainment, shopping, geolocation, cross-platform, desktop or mobile social network, blogging and publishing text materials, news, Q&A services, virtual worlds, shared bookmarks or thematic social networks.

By accessibility: there are open and closed social networks, as well as resources with mixed access. In the latter, it is rather problematic to implement paid closed access to some materials, since users are simply not used to restrictions.

By coverage: there are both websites covering the whole world, as well as intra-national or resources without reference to a particular region; separately it is possible to allocate platforms of corporations or political parties.

Popular social networks

Facebook. Users are predominantly concentrated in North America and Europe, but the audience is actively expanding to the territory of other countries, where every year Facebook becomes more and more popular. "My page" (the social network is developing rapidly, introducing new ideas) is for everyone registered.

Twitter. The service gained popularity due to a fresh rethinking of the old idea of ​​​​blogs. The developers have only artificially limited the allowable message length, which fits perfectly into modern concept"fast" life.

In the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki are widespread. The social network (which is easy to enter - all resources are open) "VKontakte" in many respects repeats Facebook, which does not interfere with the positive dynamics of user activity. "Odnoklassniki" (analogue of Classmates.com) in recent times loses ground.

Features of the development of social networks in different regions

The United States of America and Western Europe are the most developed in terms of economy and IT technologies, and, accordingly, the most covered by social networks. The market in these regions is already full of such general purpose platforms, so thematic resources are becoming in demand.

Asian countries are a very closed region, which is characterized by a large potential audience. Many projects are trying to enter this market, but it is very difficult to do so. The exception is perhaps India, where many resources that have appeared in America or Europe are actively developing.

Eastern Europe is currently considered a promising region for the development of social networks, but lags behind global trends by several years. Here, mostly popular web resources are copied, and there are very few innovative projects.

Social media advertising and marketing

Any active social network is an effective marketing tool. The volume of the advertising market in such projects is steadily growing. By 2007, the figures had reached $1.2 billion in the United States of America. In terms of social network advertising revenue, in 2011 the amounts exceeded five billion dollars.

The Dangers of Social Media

• open dissemination of confidential information;
• the opportunity to encounter inappropriate content (violence, 18+ category materials, insults, etc.);
• the possibility of using personal information by third parties for the purpose of obtaining benefits;
• stress from the dissatisfaction of social needs in the real world;
• dependence on social networks and the Internet in general;
• deliberate creation of a negative image of a certain person by other members of the community (harassment, intimidation, threats, etc.);
• computer pedophilia, sexual harassment;
• cybercrime and cyberterrorism;
• redundancy of communication and information;
• suicide propaganda (suffice it to mention the so-called death groups on the VKontakte social network or the Blue Whale game).

The leaders of the movements to shut down social media consider such web resources to be a very dangerous product. In fact, with the right approach to using such tools, most of the dangers are eliminated. Social networks are a big informational and cultural breakthrough, but you should be careful when working with any platform.

So, social networks have become firmly established in modern life and continue to gain popularity, becoming a real tool of power and a noticeable impact on society. We can safely say that in the near future the trend towards the active distribution of such projects will only grow.

A virtual community is a group of people communicating with each other using the Internet information network.

The term was coined by Howard Reingold, a social networking researcher and one of the founders of the WELL community, in 1993 in his book "Virtual Community". In this book, Reingold discusses various examples of communication between members social groups based on such mailing lists, news lists, multi-user communities, IRC. A good ethnographic book, written with great understanding of the matter, since the author himself spent most of his time in the WELL community. It is unlikely that this book can be used to analyze today's network practice, since it was written before the development of the World Wide Web and its many examples for modern readers may be incomprehensible, and the definitions are rather vague. For example, Reingold defines virtual communities as follows:

"Virtual communities are social associations that grow out of the Web when a group of people maintain an open discussion long enough and humanely enough to form a network of personal relationships in cyberspace."

John Dewey in his book "Democracy and Education" showed that communication is of decisive importance for the formation of a community, any types of human communities contain a learning function, there are criteria to determine the measure of the pedagogical value of any type of socialization, a particular community. At the same time, Dewey did not limit his analysis only to geographically close groups and also considered the possibility of the existence of virtual communities.

“People live in community because of what they have in common, and communication is the way in which they acquire this common.<>Individuals do not form societies by being purely spatially next to each other; just as a person does not cease to be influenced by society, moving a few feet or miles away from other people. A book or a letter can create a closer connection between people separated by great distances than sometimes exists between people living under the same roof.

Things unite people in communities, but people also unite things. The network community consists not only of people, but also of network resources and software agents -

Here is another example of a community definition:

A community is such a subset of vertices C from V that for all vertices belonging to the subset C there are at least as many links with the vertices of the subset C as there are links with other elements of the set V

I came across such a definition, in which there is nothing human, when describing a group of interconnected documents on the World Wide Web. Documents belong to the same community if they contain more cross-references between themselves than links to documents external to the community. The definition is strict enough in order to build an algorithm for checking a set of documents for belonging to a common community -

This definition can also be applied to a community of people - each member of the community has more connections with other members of the community than between themselves and other people who are not members of the community.

The growing interest in online communities is associated with the transition of society to a new stage of digital development. Computers and networks have already ceased to be a symbol of the future, they have firmly entered our present and now we can evaluate their impact on our relationships with other people. In this regard, the interest of practitioners is shifting from a worldwide audience of listeners and viewers to local communities where people communicate with each other and help each other. Business and social life is moving to new habitats - information cities. In order to make these cities attractive to live in, it is not enough to saturate them with information. It is necessary that this information be included in the relationships that develop between the inhabitants of new digital spaces. People most often come to the Internet in search of information. But, they remain online thanks to the relationships that develop between them and other people.

All new organizations of trade, science, art, health care are growing in the network. Each of these organizations fights, first of all, for the trust of visitors. One of the main factors influencing the trust of visitors is the community of people involved in the life and development of the organization. For new visitors and new members of the community, the opportunity to take a personal part in the activities of the community is important, they are interested in information that other people write not for money and without fulfilling someone's order. In this regard, many organizations and corporations are actively exploring the possibilities of online communities and in every possible way encourage their development.

Communities are important integral part national culture. In this regard, it can be argued that the development of network communities in different countries will take place in different ways and it is not always possible to transfer the experience that has been accumulated in one country to other countries. As an example, let us cite the already traditional in American scientific centers the custom of joint networking lunch meetings. Common in American culture is the custom of shared lunch breaks, when employees get together not only to have a bite to eat, but also to meet new colleagues, listen to a report, and exchange views on this report. Sometimes such a lunch break is associated with the arrival of a specially invited lecturer. With the development of telecommunications networks, networked dinners are increasingly organized in space, in which several people, united by a network, take part. Sometimes such mini-conferences are supported by videoconferencing, but, most often, this telephone conversations, which are relayed to all participants by a special program by the server from a common telephone number.

Pedagogical practice can use the unique characteristics of social services in the following ways: Using open, free and free electronic resources. Independent creation of a network educational content. Mastering information concepts, knowledge and skills. Observation of the activities of members of the community of practice.

What is Web 2.0 Just two years ago, this term did not exist in nature, now the Google search engine provides 871 million links to documents that mention the concept of Web 2.0. Summing up, it is recognized as the main word of 2006. The main problem with him is that even the inventors of this term are not able to explain what it really means.

Differences between Web and Web 2.0 WebWeb 2.0 Content is created and controlled by the owners of servers and sites Content is created by users Accepted hierarchy, taxonomy Changing, popular classification, folksonomy Leadership = ownership of the resource Collective intelligence = changing but stable

Delicious is a website that gives registered users the service of storing and publishing bookmarks on the pages of the World Wide Web for free. Delishes (Delicio) Differences: Links can be added and viewed from any computer connected to the Internet; Each bookmark must be tagged with one or more tags or category tags; A private online collection of web page links is part of a group collection. When placing a bookmark, you can specify: Internet address; Bookmark name; Short description Label (tag)

BeaverDobr Bookmarking on BobrDobrStoring bookmarks in a search engine The Delicio website was launched on September 24, 2003 by Joshua Schachter. Initially, it was intended to organize a giant collection of bookmarks by the creator himself. Simple link placement using the beaver toolbar

Site addresses - BobrDobr (Russian interface) - Delicious (English interface) - Rumark (Russian interface) - Colored stripes (Russian interface)

Blog (Web-log) A blog (web-log) is a public diary with comments. The blog is open for reading, readers can leave their comments on the entries. Blog Differences: The blog is personal. It has a human author (or authors) The blog is social. First, the blog itself is, in a sense, a community. Secondly, from the very beginning of the existence of blogs, their authors began to unite in communities through the publication of blogrolls of the lists of blogs read. The blog exists at the time the entries appear in chronological order. A blog is a conversation. People usually talk about what is of interest to them and what they have a personal relationship with.

Blog (Web-log) According to the author composition, blogs can be: Personal Group (corporate, club…) Public (open). By Content: Thematic General Blogging founder Tim Berners-Lee (first blog in 1992). Blogging has been on the rise since 1996.

Basic concepts of the blogosphere: Blog (blog) - posted on the Internet diary of one or more users. Technically speaking, a blog is a type of website where new posts appear before older ones. A synonym is the concept of a network diary. Post or Posting is a single blog post. Usually includes title, content, date added, and permalink. May contain links to comments and tags. Comments - the opinions of blog readers about the entry, added entries through the form provided for this. Comments may accompany the entry. The blogosphere is a single information space formed by blogs. A blogger is the author of blog posts.

How to use in pedagogical practice: A platform for pedagogical discussions. Opportunity for consultations and gaining additional knowledge. A platform for organizing the training of schoolchildren in basic and additional courses. A platform for organizing a distance learning course. Working and not so working notes of school principals and teachers. School diaries of the 21st century. Environment for organizing network research activities of students.

Site addresses – LiveJournal LJ – Live Internet – Blogs on Mail.ru

A Wiki is a website whose structure and content can be collectively modified by users using tools provided by the site itself. WikiWiki (Wiki) Wiki is characterized by the following features: The ability to repeatedly edit the text A special markup language - which allows you to easily and quickly mark up structural elements and hyperlinks in the text; format and format individual elements. Accounting for changes (versions) of pages: the ability to compare revisions and restore earlier ones. Manifest changes immediately after they are made. Splitting content into named pages. Hypertext: linking pages and subsections of the site through contextual hyperlinks. Lots of authors.

The largest and most famous wiki site - Wikipedia - is a multilingual, public, freely distributed encyclopedia published on the Internet. Contains global information. Letopisi.ru is an educational wiki-project in the genre of a guide for schoolchildren, students and teachers. TolVIKI is an open Internet platform for supporting the creativity of teachers, methodologists, students and schoolchildren of the city district of Tolyatti (city wiki) type of content management systems, simple in its design and functionality. All actions for structuring and processing content are done manually by users. WikiWiki (Wiki) The first wiki network was created by Ward Cunningham on March 25, 1995 (the word "wiki-wiki", borrowed from the Hawaiian language, means "quickly-quickly".

How to use in pedagogical practice: Presentation, expansion and annotation of educational materials. Joint creation of virtual local history and ecological excursions by schoolchildren and students. collective creation creative works- fairy tales, poems, essays. Collective creation of teacher, student and school encyclopedias. A tool for conducting local and network seminars. Networking in the absence of the Internet.

Site addresses All-Russian educational project Letopisi.ru - World WikiPedia - A project of an open world encyclopedia, in the construction of which volunteers from many countries of the world participate. WikiPedia in Russian - WikiWikiWeb - The first WikiWiki, in existence since 1995, serves as a template archive and the main forum for discussion of the WikiWikiBooks technology. teaching materials(English) EvoWiki - An open encyclopedia of materials on the evolution and origin of species. (english) CommunityWiki - Community forum for community building and networking discussions.

Flickr (Flickr) Flickr is a service designed to store and further use the user's digital photos. Features: A registered user of the system can place his photos on a remote server. The free service assumes the ability to upload 100 megabytes of photos per month. For each photo, its owner can add a title, a short description and keywords(tag) for further search. You can also make notes on the photos themselves. If the photo shows several objects (for example, several buildings), then you can select any of the objects and add a description to it.

Flickr Flickr was acquired by Yahoo! in March 2005. Additional features: The photo can have the status of private, family, group or public. The service allows all users to share photos and tags on photos. Possibility of correspondence between users formation of interest groups Koshka (656 photos) Russian analogues: Fotodia, Flamber, Gallery.ru, 35 Photo

Photoservice site addresses: - Flickr (English interface) - Flamber (Russian interface) - Panoramio (multilingual interface) - Pikasa (multilingual interface) - Photo archive on Mail.ru (Russian interface) - Fotodia (Russian interface) - KalyaMalya (Russian interface)

YouTube (YouTube) YouTube is a social service for storing, viewing and discussing digital video recordings. What YouTube users do: Upload to the server, tag and share video clips View video clips of other members of the community Find, create and combine users into thematic groups by interests Subscribe to video clip updates, create playlists and "video channels" Integrate YouTube video clips into their websites The service was founded in February 2005 Russian analogues: RUTube;

Site addresses: video services: - YouTube (English interface) - Rutube (Russian-language interface) - (Russian-language interface) - Rambler Vision (Russian-language interface)

Slideshare is a social service that allows you to convert PowerPoint presentations in Flash format and is intended for storage and further personal or shared use. SlideShare Any Internet user can find presentations on the Slideshare service using keywords to search. Presentations can be viewed in full screen mode. The site does not import effects, does not allow you to edit the imported presentation. It is possible to create groups and collect presentations on topics in them. In order to use the Slideshare service, you only need access to the Internet and any browser.

Site addresses: audio services: other services: - Scriptd (English interface) - for storing text files in any language - SlideShara (English interface) - for storing presentations - Spresent (English interface) for creating online presentations

Skype (Skype) A tool for real-time communication between people (text, sound, video) Multi-user chat with the ability to transfer files Multi-user voice communication Video call and video conferencing Calls can be divided into 3 types: Calls within the Skype network SkypeOut calls to landlines and mobile numbers SkypeIn incoming calls from any phone to your virtual number

“It is no coincidence that Time magazine named people who use Web 2.0 services and actively replenish the network with new content as the Person of the Year. If Web 1.0 opened up the opportunity to watch, copy, drag, save and then show a piece of your own success, then Web 2.0 is an opportunity for routine, constant activity within the network community. Not just - I thought, I did it, and only then I put it, but I did it right here ... "E. Patarakin

It is pleasant to communicate with the interlocutor looking eye to eye. Therefore, the rule of work and communication in Wiki Chuvashia is the representation of participants to each other. ? Answer - click Create an account In the forms that appear, you need to enter the Member Name - the name under which you will be displayed on the site, the password - a combination of characters that is required for each subsequent entry into the Chuvashia Wiki systems. Also fill in the field Your real name. This will contribute to comfortable communication and make the work of Wiki Chuvashia participants more convenient. Then click Register New Member Hooray! Wiki Chuvashia knows you!

Rules for creating text separate paragraphs from each other with an empty line (press Enter again) to highlight words and phrases in the text, use bold and italic font. In this case, it is more convenient to use the corresponding buttons on the toolbar located at the top left of the editing window (В and I) if there is one or more spaces at the beginning of the line, then this line will be displayed in a blue dotted frame. If such a display was not included in your plans, remove the extra spaces in the "Edit" mode to create a title, select the text and use the toolbar button (-A-) to create a second, third, etc. title. levels, it is enough to add one “=” sign to the title text at the beginning and at the end of the phrase in the text editing mode. Each successive "=" increases the heading level. Provided that the text does not fit on the screen page, the table of contents is automatically displayed to form a numbered list, you must add the # sign at the beginning of each item to form a bulleted list, you must add the * sign at the beginning of each paragraph to create links, use the Rules for creating links its final recording (the "Preview" button at the bottom of the editing window) changes are fixed only if you clicked on the "Record" button located at the bottom of the editing window pay attention to the "Discussion" page for your article, it may contain comments left by others users who wanted to help you (the talk page can be accessed by clicking on the Talk tab located at the top of the window with your article) use the "History" page that belongs to your article. With it, you can track the changes that have occurred with the edited text (you can get to the history page by clicking on the History tab located at the top of the window with your article) Geoinformation systems(geographical information system, GIS) systems designed for the collection, storage, analysis and graphical visualization of geographic data and related information about the presented objects. More plain language, GIS is a tool that allows users to search, analyze and edit digital maps, and Additional information about objects, for example, the height of the building, the address, the number of residents. GIS includes the capabilities of databases, graphic editors and analytical tools and is used in cartography, geology, meteorology, land management, ecology, municipal government, transport, economics, defense.

How to use in pedagogical practice: As a source of maps and images of the area in the study of geography, history, local history, foreign languages As a platform for solving research problems on various subjects associated with the calculation of distances, selection the shortest way, comparing the features of different areas, etc. As a platform for creative activities in modeling a new look of areas with drawing their own images of buildings, landscape objects. As a platform for network projects(webquests) related to guessing and searching for various geographical points of the Earth

Site addresses - (Google maps) Google Maps - (Wikimapia) Google Maps + WikiWiki - (Googleers) Volumetric model of the Earth Google - (Panoramio) photo service with the ability to link to digital maps

International Google Maps Russia America Canada Germany Italy Netherlands France Britain Japan Australia Spain China