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RUSSIAN MIGRATION POLICY IN THE CONTEXT OF SOCIAL NETWORKS

Olga Borodkina, V. Sibirev, A. Klebanov

Abstract

In 2016, more than 16.3 million migrants were recorded, while there is illegal migration in Russia, which generates serious social, economic, and political problems. The attitude of the population towards migration policy in Russia is ambiguous, and it is reflected in social networks. Social networks and blogosphere contain data to study the effectiveness of migration policy by social science. The paper deals with reflection of the international migration and migration policy in social network. The analysis of the content of the Russian Internet segment was carried out in order to evaluate public opinion to international migration. The analysis was done based on the results of monitoring of social media (big date) on a platform developed and supported by company “Beensaid”. The social network “VKontakte” (in contact) which represents one of the most popular Internet resources of the Internet and reflects the interests of the most active part of Russian society, as well as the part of the Ru-net, which for various reasons was outside the Russia, was selected for analyze. A total of 52,469 entries were made in Runet. 75% was in “VKontakte”. The research results demonstrate that among users of Russian social networks in general, a negative attitude towards migrants prevails (35%). The gender of the user has no effect on the attitude towards migration, in contrast to the age, and judging from the data received, youth are more negative about migrants. In the network "VK" there are various communities devoted to migration, which can be conditionally divided into two groups. The first group is more concerned about the issue of emigration from Russia. This includes communities of people, who have already emigrated from Russia trying to help others who want to integrate into Western society. At the same time, according to Russian survey there is a trend of decreasing the number of people wishing to leave Russia. The second group consists of communities that try to solve the problems of migrants in Russia and to some extent influence the flows of international migration. The results of the research show that the main problems that concern migrants are the lifting of restrictions on entry to Russia; the right to asylum, a residence permits; validity of deportation. To increase the efficiency of migration policy Russian government should use the network’s resources.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2018H/11/S01.010

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