VII Grushin Sociological Conference

On March 15-16th, the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) held the VII Grushin Sociological Conference, where SESL staff members presented the results of their research

Ksenia Tenisheva gave a talk on the topic “The Social and Physical Space of Small Cities: A Field Study” at the section titled “The Future in Our Cities. Using Sociological Tools in the Formation of Urban Spaces”, which was organized by Vladimir Zvonovsky, a specialist in urban studies, who had been our guest at SESL earlier (https://slon.hse.ru/news/182451703.html). All speakers at this section presented their methods of research and data analysis in modern Russian cities, and many of these methods can be regarded as innovative. For example, they demonstrated a possibility of using the big data for research in flu pandemics, and using neural networks for analyzing snapshots of one-industry cities shared by the locals in the VKontakte social network. Quite a few times the presenters raised a problem of interacting with local authorities. Even in the cases where the modern methods allow the researchers to put forward innovative recommendations for improving the urban environment, the city administration would rarely take them into consideration, because they wouldn’t fit into the standard framework. Perhaps this is the main obstacle that urban studies have to face in the modern Russia: their scientific importance can be very clear but their role in transforming cities still remains insignificant.
At the section titled “Internet as a Habitat, Virtual Reality as a Lifestyle. Trends and Social Consequences” (chaired by Ivan Klimov), Vadim Voskresensky presented his talk “The Activity of Urban Residents in Online Groups of St. Petersburg”. At this section, speakers were sharing the results of their research on online communication and methods of analyzing the data collected from the Internet. Our colleagues from the Moscow HSE presented a report on the communication between the members of online public groups in Moscow districts, and a talk on methods for sample selection based on the data from the social network VK.com. They also gave presentations on political sympathies of Internet users and on the specific problems in creating an online platform for joint research work.Our colleagues had a productive meeting with other researchers, they exchanged their contact details and discussed possibilities for future cooperation.