THE IMAGE OF THE SOCIAL NETWORK "VKONTAKTE" IN THE FOREIGN PRESS
The article examines the way the social network "Vkontakte" in the Western press, through a comparative analysis of English (The Telegraph), German (Spiegel) and American (New York Times) publications. The method of collecting information was content analysis of messages about social networks on the websites of foreign publications. The unit of analysis in this study was a report on the Russian social network. The article concludes on the predominant coverage of the social network in the context of political news. Universal for all publications is the emphasis on the confrontation between the state and society, which is covered by examples of censorship in the Russian Internet. The presence of regional specificity of publications is shown. The American edition periodically raised the issue of persecution of representatives of the LGBT community in Russia and published materials on the organization of attacks by Russian hackers. Telegraph published a series of materials on legal sanctions against Russians for posting various materials "Vkontakte". The publication Spiegel has devoted several articles to the problem of the spread of nationalist ideas. Two articles devoted to the research activities of ISIS in the Vkontakte network are analyzed separately. It is shown that there is almost no interest in the network "Vkontakte" as a technical object. Part of the messages related to the need for rapid coverage of events on a variety of events. This block of messages is not systematic, has different themes in all three editions and, as we can assume, fills the information space in the absence of political news. The study concludes on the formation of a negative image of the social network in the Western press.