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7CULTURAL SCIENCES
TRADITIONAL CRAFTS IN THE GLOBAL SPACE OF THE INTERNET: SPECIAL ASPECTS OF
FIELD-ORIENTED SOCIAL NETWORKS
Siiukhova A.,
Doctor of Culturology, Associate Professor Professor of the Department of Philosophy, Sociology and Pedagogy
Maykop State Technological University Pervomayskaya 191, Maykop, Russia Bazalina E.
Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages Maykop State Technological University Pervomayskaya 191, Maykop, Russia
Abstract
In this article had been discussed a method of social communication on the Internet based on general professional hobbies in the field of amateur creativity. The urgency of the research is demonstrated feasibility of the fact that the social life of a modern person in the sphere of social production seems to be extremely formalized and it often happened that the person has no possibility to show his personal individuality, which can negatively influence the state of both an individual and society as a whole. Compensating for this deficit makes it possible to engage in amateur creativity in various fields, and communication in social networks with like-minded hobbies can enhance the sociocultural effect of creative satisfaction. In the research has been used the method of analyzing documents like the posts of forum participants on the site of sewing lovers "burdastyle.ru". The analysis revealed that the initially horizontal structure of network communication in the process of forming a network community gradually acquires the properties of a vertical hierarchy, where each participant receives his conditional social status with his inherent role. Thus, the effect of social stratification arises according to significant social characteristics (material security, level of education, etc.). Long-term participation in network communication with specific participants through the monitor leads to the fact that it can be perceived as a kind of plot of a series, where forum participants acquire the qualities of character-types. The main conclusion of the article is that the creative potential of handmade placed in the Internet space increases a great deal and as a result an atmosphere of collective immersion into the depths of artistic communication with its inherent function of growing up the vital energy of society and individuals arises.
Keywords: social communication, social networks, handmade, social stratification, social statuses, roles.
Modern researchers are increasingly talking about changes in the society structure. An indicator of this factor is as following: a noticeable increase in the value of the network structure and a significance narrowing of the vertically hierarchical structure. Thus, the authors of the publication "Social network as a new form of social space organization" have noticed that the hierarchical structure of the society has become as ineffective structure and does not meet the requirements of modern history, and the result is the current global crisis. An alternative to hierarchy should be the worldwide Web (WWW) which is capable to resist the entropic processes in the society [1].
Another issue of social development in the world community is the problem of post-industrial displacement of people's activities mostly from production to office-management and services, and less to research and education. All designated areas of professional activity have the unpleasant property of bringing an individual to emotional burnout, the impossibility of achieving a sense of happiness as the immanent human need like a biosocial being. An aggravating factor is also such a property of modern society as the atomiza-tion of personality expressing in the sense of real or potential loneliness, based on the limitations and fragility
of social connections between people. It is often happened when a person has one social role (family or professional) which suppresses the entire set of roles and as a result, its loss leads to a sense of life's collapse.
One of the ways to resist existential crises, to intensify strong social connection based on the spiritual closeness and to find happiness becomes handmade it means amateur creativity in various fields. Creativity itself carries a charge of happiness, but this charge is multiplied if it has a response from like-minded people. The Internet has become a convenient space associating in the common virtual community of people occupying themselves with different kind of applied aesthetic activity.
It should be noted that there is a large number of sites and forums including people by their creative interests, such as knitting, sewing, felting, embroidery, tanning, wood carving and embossing, weaving paper baskets, scrapbooking, decoupage and patchwork, etc. it can still be continued. People have been included in the worldwide Web of a hand-made and entered it "like a fish falling into a net" the most of them often entered it by chance, through the perception of published posts in the most common social networks of general profile,
for example, popular Russian websites "Class-mates/Odnoklassniki" or "VKontakte". The network space has been pulling and absorbing them, makes people an active participant in the events, assigns a place in its own structure. It has been taking their time, but gives in return such preferences as the possibility of self-presentation, obtaining social approval, satisfying their need to give their own point of view to the events and to the people who lives in the worldwide Web. All these directions are referred by sociological researchers to "social capital", which manifests itself either as "structural capital", taking into account the institutional aspect of communication, or as "cognitive capital" presenting the intentional aspect of communication (trust, relationships and other values) [2].
From the very beginning of its formation the network structure has a horizontal structure, a priori, where each participant is equal to each other. However, in the process of development, it becomes more complex and spontaneously, it is often imperceptibly for its subscribers and has acquired some properties of the hierarchy. For example, a group of researchers - the authors of the publication "Model of Social Stratification in the Virtual Social Networks" mentioned that a type of stratification has been formed in the worldwide Web based according to the Russian scientist P. Sorokin, and his main highlighting criterion of well-being that is the ability to use expensive technology to create and consume content (camera, video camera, a computer with a powerful processor, access to fast Internet, etc.) [3].
For our part, we can mention that the stratification of the worldwide Web into vertical strata can be also occurred according to the criterion of content - text quality, novelty, compositional alignment, the inclusion of an artistic component. According to the comment of the Russian researcher I.G. Ovchinnikova carnival traditions inherent in Internet culture, the use of masks and methods of alienation from the real social self, the realization of the individual are in many ways facilitated. [4]. The perception of conventionally carnival acts through a computer screen gives them the form of a spectacle and, in some cases, the kind of art. The carnival element is the most clearly manifested in the blogosphere communication and on the Internet platforms like forums.
We propose to consider the implementation of the carnival and entertainment start on the example of the photo-forum of the website "Burda-style", the network association of needlework amateurs. This website has been effective since 2014 and has been connected through the network 550880 subscribers of the popular Russian websites "Classmates/Odnoklassniki" and 371561 subscribers" of the other popular Russian website "VKontakte" (data/information as of March 24, 2018). There is a photo-forum (PhF) on the website and the structure is organized as a constantly updated gallery of photos showing the result of the creativity of the participants with links to their personal posts attached to them. The first page of PhF has been already perceived by the public as a kind of virtual excursion to the photo exhibition, which gives rise to artistic and aesthetic evaluation and comparison of the works presented. The eye snatches out of two dozen "pictures"
the most amazing one and the viewer honors it with applause in the form of "likes" and takes the opportunity to follow the link to view the entire post.
There is screenings of uninteresting works have being already done in the phase of the original gallery, or waste of participants who are poorly mastered the technology of aesthetic presentation of their sample. For example, the photos of stitched things presented not on a living person but on the tailor's mannequin have been received less approvals. It's clear in this case that there is no attachment of the clothes to the personality image, which makes it impossible to show the artistry itself through associations with the general cultural values of humanism, and the participant of PhF has been perceived as impersonal and there is nobody who wants to communicate with him. The participants who put several works in the gallery at once are not very popular as well. The reason is that the psychological mechanism of limited communication with unfamiliar people has been working: by writing a comment about the clothes of the author the guest will not contact him the second and the third time. There is not much interest in the forum posts dedicated to the very simple manufacturing technology products, such as knitted sweatshirts, which have been sewing for a couple of hours. This result is caused not only by the primitiveness of the labor invested, but also by the absence of the artistic-figurative potential of the thing. However, if the author has presented an interesting work in artistic and aesthetic way, but subsequently he does not respond to the expressed impressions, comments and advice, then the interest of the photo forum community towards him has been also quickly diminishing.
The authors remaining after such a "dropout" make up the core of the forum, hierarchically rising above the other participants. The majority of the "guests" has come to their personal pages and as a rule there are authors among them with a high status as well. Thus, the virtual elite have being formed, which set a general tone for communication on the forum, which by personal example form the rules of communication.
The posts themselves have a traditional form: a number of photos have been accompanied by the author's textual description of the work; there are guests' comments on the page with the possibility of cross-communication with the "owner" and among the guests themselves. Long descriptions can be written only by the most "titled" forum users. Many of them differ in the artistic text features; others provide very detailed descriptions of the technological process of the production. However, the main "link-baiting" for the guests is the video sequence - the sequence and quality of the posted photos. Experienced "post-makers" organize their own micro gallery based on the principles of artistic dramaturgy, which traditionally represents sections of the plot, development, culmination and denouement. You can also use the similarity of musical shaping, for example, rondo forms, where the same type of pictures (refrain) alternate with others in the composition of the photo (episodes). It is solved individually every time depending on the available photographic material, but the structure is always visible. The author himself be-
comes the protagonist of the show, representing his creative self in his own posts, not only in accordance with their quality, but also with their quantity.
The perception of photo-forum information occurs through a long accumulation of impressions, resulting in a holistic view of his work as an artistic program like an epic or a series. Forum participants acquire the qualities of character types representing a certain hyper-plot. Naturally, this plot corresponds to the archetypical structure of traditional folklore text since it hasn't been forming by professional authors but by collective consciousness.
Due to the fact that 99.9% of the participants in the photo-forum are women, self-arisen characters have also a feminine image, or an image of deified natural elements that can change their gender character. For example, the image of a forum woman named Arvovna is associated with the mythological image of the Sun -warming, giving wealth to everyone falling into its rays. She deserved such title by selfless love to the art of sewing, constant updating of the personal photo gallery with sturdy works, the highest professionalism, activities outside the forum in the field of sewing craftsmanship. Objective indicators of status are meant to be the number of views of her posts and the number of subscribers to her account equal respectively to 46782 and 509. Arvovna answers absolutely everyone who has left comments to her posts.
Participant Gaika3022, who has been perceived as a Goddess in artistic collective consciousness, has the same high, but somewhat different status. She regularly presents sewing things filled with taste, made in perfect technology, puts photos of individual components of the product before exhibiting them. In the whole the thoughts about the inaccessibility and the divinity of this level of skill have been created. Gaika3022 herself has noted the participation of the divine providence of her talent, when she has written on the main page of her account that at the time of her birth, God put a needle and thread in her hand and ordered her to sew and decorate the world. The author's communication with the guests has been in the form of restrained gratitude for reverence and worship.
The role of the goddesses has been tried to put on the next website persons YliaM and Elena_Zorya who has a huge number of subscribers with the enthusiastic-kneeling attitude to them. However, YliaM gradually had lost her position, apparently having spent her creativity resource, and Elena_Zorya could not compete with Gaika3022. So ElenaZorya had taken her subscribers and went (ascended) to Instagram, where no constant reminder is that she is not the only one and is divine. Characteristic features of the Goddesses are revealed in these characters with astonished and painful perception of the critics, saying "How dare?" But cases of criticism are extremely rare, because the phenomenon of social perception has been working, including such elements as prejudice, intra-group favoritism, halo effects, presumption of reciprocity, etc. [5].
If the Sun and the Goddess are single characters, so there may be several Stars and Queens. The participants of photo-forum Sok-1, poz-gala and Elena Leo can be attributed to the Stars demonstrating brilliance,
brightness, activity, a huge positive resonance among the audience. With time one of them may become the Sun or the Goddess.
Several photo-forum characters can be described as the "Queen", distinguished by the exquisite style of clothes and royal postures on the background of rich interiors or landscapes, a certain detachment in the manner of communication, the use of only expensive high-quality branded materials for their needlework, and the use of high-quality digital equipment to create post (Svetlana Gysymova and kyhta). There is a Queen Mother character, associated with the participant of photo-forum irinabeletskaja, who has all the above qualities, with a good character and she is always ready to support and encourage successful experiences of ordinary forum participants.
Along with the characters of the Goddess, the Sun, the Stars and the Queens, princesses have occupied a prominent place in the plot. They are young, beautiful and elegant craftswomen who have an exquisite taste and aristocracy, like the British princesses Diana and Catherine.
The fairy God-mother, witch and sorceress, the alien and artist, Mary the Wizard and Vasilisa the Wise can also be singled out as the protagonists of the forum's super-story. In addition to the main characters, there are many minor characters in the text, and the people as a whole, who constitute and fill the artistic chro-notope of photo-forum.
However, according to one of the participants' remarks in the photo forum, everyone has their own Forum, i.e. the choice of the main characters and the hyper plot of the artistic narrative have been composed of different participants and spectators subjectively, based on their own aesthetic and cultural settings. Thus, a multitude of stories have been unfolded on the forum in parallel, similar to either a fairy tale or modern television soap operas.
Practice shows that photo forum has been daily visited by many participants and guests attracted the opportunity to show personal artistic abilities besides the hobby of sewing needlework and they can also be spectators of the others' artistry. The ordinariness of the sewing craft presented on the screen in the form of interaction has been acquired artistic outlines that can evoke a sense of aesthetic pleasure, the desire to serially continue this spectacle, and empathy for the main characters.
In addition to achieving the main goal of many participants of the Bourda-style forum - to overcome chronic fatigue syndrome from the production and family routine - the aesthetic development of the individual, re-socialization and inculturation through the perception of new patterns and standards of interaction, self-knowledge and replenishment of positive mental energy to use it in a real complex world. Tracing the way of many characters long-living on the forum, we can see the undoubted effect of communication in the forum on their aesthetic taste, on the formation of a more positive outlook on the surrounding life and on themselves. In some cases, the benefits of photo-forum had been also expressed in real improvements over a
certain period of the somatic health of the participants - weight loss, physical fitness of the figure, etc.
Concluding our research we can say that the creative potential of a handmade item placed in the space of the Internet increases many times over. As a result, an atmosphere of collective immersion into the depths of artistic communication has been arising with the function immanently inherent in it to repeatedly increase the vital energy of the society and individuals. The undoubted psychotherapeutic effect for individual participants of online communication concerns the handmade is very important, but as a by-product of this process. The main thing is the actualization in the public consciousness of the mythological picture of the world saturated with cultural archetypes, emotions and aesthetics, the increase in the value of each individual, the ability of society to resist hard functionalism and pragmatism, spread by modern management in professional and political-economic spheres.
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