SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SERVICES IN THE VOLYN REGION

Abstract

Social networking services are one of the distinctive modern phenomena. They are studied by many sciences. However, the spatial aspects of the development and functioning of social networking services are not fully explored. There are some studies in the English-language literature of various geographical aspects of the functioning of social networking services and their integration into GIS. But scientific publications of the geography of social networking services are practically absent in Ukraine. The purpose of this paper is to identify the peculiarities of the spatial differentiation of social networking services in the Volyn region. The main task is to analyze the number of accounts and the structure of users of social networking services VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and Facebook in the context of administrative districts and large cities of Volyn region. As a result of the study, it was revealed that social networks VKontakte, Classmates and Facebook have comparable audiences in the Volyn region. The biggest social networking is VKontakte, the second place belongs to Odnoklassniki, while Facebook is on the third place. Social network VKontakte dominates in the north of the Volyn region, Odnoklassniki – in the south and east. Facebook is the leader only in one administrative unit – Lutsk district. All three networks have similar territorial patterns of user distribution. Two thirds of users are concentrated in the cities of Lutsk, Kovel, Novovolynsk, and Volodymyr-Volynsky. More than 40% of the accounts are concentrated in Lutsk. The theory of the spatial diffusion of innovations is clearly traceable. The penetration rate of the social networking services is the highest in the largest cities. In Lutsk, it amounts to 76.5 % for social networking service VKontakte, 67.3 % for Odnoklassniki, and 70.1 % for Facebook. In addition to large cities, many users of the social networking services live in the border areas of Lyuboml, Shatsk, Ratne, and Lyubeshiv districts. However, for most districts of the Volyn region, the penetration rate of the network is 10-20%. This indicates a lack of network formation and significant perspectives of further development in rural areas. Women are dominating in sex structure, especially in the Odnoklassniki.