The communicative preferences of technical university students in social networks

¹ Saint Petersburg State University of Civil Aviation, Language Training Department, 196210, 38 Pilotov str., St. Peterburg, Russia
² National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), Department of Foreign Languages, 115409, 31 Kashirskoe shosse, Moscow, Russia

^* Corresponding author: nvsemenova@mail.ru

Abstract

The paper focuses on social networking activities of university students from the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute) and Saint Petersburg State University of Civil Aviation. The authors make an attempt to determine the network communicative preferences of students that train for technical professions. The choice of the universities is motivated by the strategic importance of the professions obtained by their graduates. Respondents’ preferences in using various social networks for the instructions were detected by the questionnaire described in the paper. The results show strong preference of VK, Instagram, Facebook, but in practice, reflecting the access rate, only VK could be used for education purposes. It is noted that the network preferences of the students from both technical universities are in line with the general Russian trends. And though online social networks are used by them mostly for the sake of rest and recreation, for communicating with friends, the students show that they are greatly interested in accumulating their social and professional capital by means of online social networks. This fact runs counter to their evaluation of the content offered by the contemporary professionally oriented network communities, with which they are not satisfied.