PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE REFLECTION OF THINKING IN SOCIAL NETWORKING WEBSITES

Internet technologies and virtual communication have become the integral part of modern life, and they keep influencing the users' thinking. Modern research studies deal with the process of thinking in the Internet, as well as its peculiarities, but though there are a few empirical studies in this field. The paper aims to examine the reflection of thinking in social networking websites, in particular – to detect the forms of thought transfer the bloggers use in their posts, as well as the ways they affect the cognitive processes of the audience. The study is based on the following research methods: theoretical review of scientific literature, analysis of network messages, quantitative and qualitative methods (regressive analysis). According to the ideas of L. Vygotsky's cultural and historical concept, cognitive processes are interrelated with language and communication, thinking is reflected via “inner speech” into “external” in a written form. Thinking and written speech are modified and get new characteristics in the Internet. The study sample consisted of the messages taken from the posts of Facebook users. The homogeneity of the sample was provided by the selection of the messages in one topic (real or imaginary event). In December, 2016, 10 topics in socio-political field were chosen and 50 posts of different bloggers were analysed. The research results have shown some peculiarities: active use of a wide variety of visual and imaginary forms of thoughts reflection; convergence of linguistic and visual forms, their mixture. The audience's reaction to certain messages depends on the forms of the author's thoughts reflection. The combined application of linguistic and visual forms (a text together with pictures or videos, internet-memes, etc.) has significant impact on the audience's thinking stabilization. The forms using direct appeal to the audience influence the development of users' thinking. The methods of direct interaction of the author with the audience (comments, questions, pools) provoke the formation of the readers' thoughts, which is manifested in a great number of comments to the post.