Outlook of using social network analysis to study ethnocultural identity in adolescents in online communities

Background. The life of modern adolescents is inseparable from online communities that are not only means of communication and source of information, but they also mediate the development of interpersonal and intergroup attitudes, the process of socialization and shape identity. The study of the processes in online communities helps to determine the influence of digital society on the formation of ethnocultural identity and the risks of its negative transformations, the emergence and spread of negative attitudes, xenophobia, and intergroup hostility. Social Network Analysis (SNA), widely used in a number of disciplines but still rarely used in psychological research, may provide new opportunities to explore these processes in online communities. Objective. The research was aimed at examining the possibilities of applying social network analysis to the study of ethnocultural identity of Russian adolescents. Design. By creating a code in the language R (R 3.6.1 + R Studio 1.2.1335), the analysis of the relations of a number of communities of the social network «Vkontakte», whose content is relevant to various aspects of ethnocultural (ethnic, cultural, religious, regional, national) identity was performed. In these communities Moscow and St. Petersburg dwellers aged 14 to 18 years were identified and sampled (78,784 Moscow-based users and 210,815 St. Petersburg-based users). Based on the results, social graphs were constructed and the analysis of relations between communities in the two cities of Russia was carried out. Results. The general tendencies and differences between the links of online communities, the content of which is relevant to various aspects of ethnocultural identity in the cities of Russia under consideration, are revealed. For the target category, Moscow-based and St. Petersburg-based user-adolescents, the online communities were considered to be most relevant between those with ethnic content. The differences relate to connexions between large community called «Russia» and other studied online communities. There is no connexion between all other communities from Moscow with community «Russia» while adolescents-users from St. Petersburg actively participate in the community «Russia», especially those who are in communities whose content is devoted to ethnic and cultural issues. Conclusion. The results show the existing outlooks for the social networks analysis, which allows to cover a wide range of users of online communities, for the stud