The role of virtual online communities in spreading destructive youth subcultures

This article discusses the theoretical and methodological approaches to the analysis of virtual online communities in contemporary social science. The paper investigates the concept of “social network analysis”, provides history and examples of using network analysis in various fields of scientific knowledge. The following are the results of author’s social research in respect of two types of destructive youth online communities, i.e. train surfers and football fans. The article revealed the common features of these communities’ users. It defined the role of virtual services in the dissemination of youth subcultures.