Military culture in the digital space: social media content analysis (experience of studying a thematic group on the VKontakte platform)

The article identifies the main thematic areas of social media content dedicated to military culture using the example of the user community, which is the most relevant and representative in terms of the chosen topic. The totality of the research materials was made up of the publications of the Military Culture community, which unites several thousand users of the Russian social network Vkontakte; the conclusions and generalizations reflected in Russian researchers’ works analyzing self-organizing Internet communities had a certain theoretical significance. The methodological basis of the work, in addition to descriptive and comparative methods, was content analysis and correlation analysis. The author proceeds from the fact that any Internet community is a continuation, and often a new form, of social reality, which has many of the properties inherent in a real community. Communities in social networks are able to influence subscribers in real life, form certain behavior patterns, at the same time giving users the freedom to choose their position in the social structure of the network. In the course of the study, the content of the Military Culture network community (the most popular community of the VKontakte social network associated with the topic under consideration) was studied; based on content analysis, the set of publications was structured depending on their thematic timing. Ten thematic areas (categories) of content posted in the community were identified (for example, education, cultural policy, documents, history and exploits, patriotic organizations, holidays and memorable days, etc.), each area was described in detail. The author notes that the set of these areas can be supplemented, since there are a large number of groups covering aspects of military culture in one way or another. The identified categories were ranked by popularity, the most popular thematic aspects related to the problems of military culture were identified. A correlation analysis was carried out between some quantitative characteristics of posts in the community, which showed that community members (including young people) are mainly attracted by content with useful information about the procedure and rules for entering military universities. The author concludes that the coverage of military culture in the digital space allows expanding professional communication between cultural and art workers engaged in the military sphere, sharing experience, presenting their achievements, and promoting the values of citizenship and patriotism.