Overlap of Youth and Student Online Communities

The aim of the study is to identify overlap and audience interrelations of various youth and student online communities in the VKontakte. 23 youth and student online communities of 4 regions (in which are located universities of the consortium “Upper Volga - the Territory of Innovation”) and 4 online communities of federal authorities and all-Russian youth organizations on the VKontakte were selected for the research. Through the Target Hunter platform, primary information about VKontakte communities was collected (number of subscribers; type of community; openness of communities). Later, using the “audience intersection” function, it was possible to understand how many subscribers from different VKontakte online communities are in them at the same time. Having received the number of overlapping users for each community, a general sociomatrix was compiled, in which the proportion of overlapping subscribers from the total number of subscribers of a single online community was revealed. The analysis of audience overlap reveals the degree of unified information space formation in the student environment and the ability to broadcast the agenda to the target audience on the Internet and organization of effective communication.