Model for evaluating the influence of virtual network communities on the opinions of internet users on socio-political issues

Various approaches to assessing the impact of virtual network communities on the opinions of Internet users on socio-political issues are presented. The differences and similarities between virtual network communities and traditional mass media are considered. A brief description is given to some Russianlanguage social networks - “Odnoklassniki” and “VKontakte”. It has been established that weak reflection of the critical perception of messages on thematic forums poses a threat to the socio-psychological well-being of a large number of potential consumers of this information. A method is proposed for assessing the impact of virtual network communities on the opinions of Internet users, based on a gametheoretic concept - the Shapley vector. This approach makes it possible to assess the influence of a particular community in the context of the existing informational background with a given structure of the social network. The research methodology is represented by a set of sociological methods and elements of game theory, as well as combinatorics.