The Semantic Analysis of Students' Life Activity in a Social Network

Global trends related to the development of digital space provide researchers with new opportunities for studying human behavior in virtual interaction on platforms of various social networks. In the modern personality cognition psychology, one of the relevant study areas is the virtual communication. Interaction in the virtual space is actively being introduced into the existing reality, in this regard, a person is forced to constant behavior change, taking into account the reality in which (real or virtual) he/she interacts. Today, most Russians have accounts on social networks and are actively using other features of the virtual space. Interaction in social networks has its advantages over ordinary communication, namely: tools for finding any information and the ability to conduct a dialogue with several people at the same time, while being in different places. Users of social networks can actively form their profile on a digital platform in which they reflect any information about themselves including personal ones. A user of a social network creates a virtual personality on the personal website page, the characteristics of which are presented in the form of markers (photos, posts, audio recordings, videos, group topics, number of friends, subscribers), which we can use as virtual ones. We can use virtual markers as success criteria of a modern student since a competition for a successful student is an important component for the educational environment, and the fact that a successful student who demonstrates success in studies, science and life activity is a resource for the future of our country, it follows that the search for applicants differing in the potential of a successful student is an important task for an educational institution. In this regard, the purpose of the study is a semantic analysis of the students' life activity based on virtual markers of the VKontakte social network user. This article discusses the results of the virtual markers research of students' vital activity in the framework of the project, which is carried out with the financial support of the Russian Science Foundation and aims to develop a theoretical and applied model for predicting a person’s vital activity in educational and professional activities through social networks. This study is aimed at exploring the possibilities of predicting students' life activity through the study of the objective laws between a number of quantitative and content characteristics of their profile in social networks (the number of friends, the nature of groups, subscribers, photos and posts) and their academic performance. The research methods in this work are a comparative analysis of personal pages in a social network using content-analytical research and statistical methods (percentage ratio and analysis of average values). This article considers the life activity of a person in a virtual space through social networks. The empirical data obtained make it possible, based on the analysis of virtual markers, to compose a psychological portrait of a user, predict models of his/her behavior, and also develop new psychological methods of work that will help overcome difficulties and solve problematic situations that arise in person’s virtual space.