The paper represents some issues related to the formation values of young people through the prism of media structures, in particular the media space, which is a system that arises in the process of communicative interaction of different social institutions. The authors prove that such youth actions as monstration allow people to integrate into the social environment or, on the contrary, contribute to the process of disintegration.

This article is devoted to essential aspects of the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann, especially with regard to his conception of symbolically generalized communication media. Luhmann’s conception shows contemporary society as a functionally differentiated society in which a number of partial social systems (subsystems) operate, each of which is made up of communications that take place in their own distinctive communication medium. Luhmann presents a picture of a society that does not represent an integrated whole. It is a pluralist entity that operates without a top and without a centre, lacking the means of meta-communication.

The research of Eurasian integration publications is actual in the context of the world order changing and nowadays Russian-American relations. The foreign policy of Russia and the United States in the Post-Soviet countries is the most sensitive issue of bilateral agenda which promoted emergence of crisis in the Russian-American interaction. The survey is aimed to fill the gap in understanding of the nature and features of Eurasian integration from the point of US experts. The research supplements nowadays awareness and systematizes the new information. It is supposed to pursue the descriptive review which is providing essence of current scientific knowledge and trends in development of this knowledge.

The first decades of the 21st century, the system of social and labor relations is facing unprecedented challenges from the external environment. These are globalization, economic growth based on the increasing role of knowledge, as well as the revolutionary development of information and communication technologies. On the other hand, the solution of the acute problem of employment of the population is becoming more closely associated with the concept of “self-employment” and “employment according to the demand on the labor market.It is difficult to find a vacancy in the profile of the received specialty, especially for young specialists due to the high level of competition in the labor market. Many professions that were interesting for young people in “soviet times” lost their social and material status among young professionals. Conversely, some occupations that were in “soviet times” stigmatized (for example entrepreneur), today is the real way to solve the problem of unemployment. Today formation of entrepreneurial competencies among graduates of modern society is one of the most important issues in the development of our education and economy.Consequently, in the short term, the real way to solve the problem of unemployment is to promote the development of small and medium-sized enterprises-business entities, which today is the most important direction of economic reforms in 21st century. The effective functioning of these reforms is directly related to the identification and development of entrepreneurial potential among the unemployed young people, with the creation of an appropriate educational base and support for entrepreneurship at the state level. Therefore, the study of the entrepreneurial potential of the population is of great importance for the planning of measures of the entrepreneurial policy of the country as a whole.

The paper introduces the symbolic approach to understanding the issues of the construction of the regional identity of the European Union. The goal of the research is philosophical-cultural analysis of meaning and role of the symbols in the process of shaping identity of the EU. The research has multidimensional approach and it involves the concepts, theories, methods from Philosophy, Sociology, History, Political Studies and Intercultural Communication. It is established that the European Union policy creates and transmitters particular symbols as the means of the social technology forming common European identity. The key result of the research is the examination of the main trends of the interpretation of the EU’s official symbols. The theoretic-practical importance of a research reveals in the suggestion that from the end of the XX century Europe has experienced the period of the global socio-cultural and political-economic transformation. The formation of the common meanings of the symbols of the EU will help social groups and communities of the EU to recognize and feel as the part of the all-European political-economic and socio-cultural model.

The paper represents a review a range of theories of the relationship between public opinion and communication, offering insight into a variety of interpretations of the term «public opinion». The authors analyze various approaches to the theory of public opinion, the influence of mass media on public opinion, as well as the role played by public opinion in a democratic society. The text employs several scientific treatises to discuss some questions of communication related to public opinion and provides a review of recent findings from research carried out by most prominent scholars. An introduction of contemporary scholarship, currently not available in Russian, exposes readers to a diversity of approaches and perspectives.

The article analyzes the problems of the higher education system in the context of public control. The communication tools used in the sphere of science and education are considered. The conclusion that the mechanism of public control contains the technological parameters of the control system, allowing to carry it out in practice, and includes methods, means and forms of public control influence in the sphere of interests of citizens and organizations. Based on generalization of the knowledge as represented in the scientific literature and results of sociological research the author offers new theoretical positions of public control at the higher school and provides practical recommendations on their implementation in social practice.

Modern sports is a unique social and communicative phenomenon that unites people and creates vivid images that determine national and international interest and give rise to popular brands. Besides, the process of the development of the brands gives rise to cultural communication technologies: images provide effective communication between communities and individuals. Communities position themselves, forming attitudes and the environment with which they are associated; they determine the importance of communication for the audience, and affect its further behavior and communication reactions. As far as the image of the country is firmly and steadily associated with national sports brands, communication based on interaction with sports brand communities in other countries is successful. The validity of this statement in this article is shown and justified by the example of Italy and Russia. The author proves that the technology of successful cultural communication should be aimed at creating and maintaining a unique associative range through the interaction of specific sports brand communities with territory and event branding, which should facilitate the processes of further intercultural communication.

In this paper we consider the specificity of the functioning of the effects of informational impact on a person in the Internet space. At the same time, the effects are presented as «old», that is, long known to science and widespread in the media, and «new» - for some technical reasons, appearing only in the global network or reproducing the already known ways of influence in new Internet conditions. Among the effects of informational impact we distinguish «effects-means», «effects-results» and «effects-impressions». We draw a particular attention to the so called «effects-impressions», which by their nature and socio-cultural consequences are close to such a way of social influence on a person, as impressing. Besides, we reveal the conditions for the occurrence of effects, the nature of which can be considered as impressing-caused: situations of emotional vulnerability, critical periods of personal development and a predisposition to certain socio-cultural influences. It is shown that the coincidence of these conditions increases the effectiveness of both «old» and «new» effects of informational influence on the Internet.

Traditional religious culture has undergone visible transformation in the conditions of Soviet secularization. Nevertheless, religion remains an element of social communication and social interaction in the space of culture. Taking into account this aspect is inevitable in the explication of cultural patterns in religious, sociological and historical research works. This paper shows how traditional religious customs and traditions existed in the space of the immanent framework of secular Soviet culture mainly in rural areas. The publication deals with the structure of the life world of the Soviet people based on the actant analysis. An important point in the modern history of our country was the return of religion to the life of society. At the same time, traditional religions in this return relied on folk customs and traditions preserved during the period of Soviet secularization.

The article dwells upon the theory and practice of political communications in the modern conditions of the functioning of power elites, in conjunction with the dynamics of global geopolitical changes. Analyzing the transformation of political communications, we illustrate anti-crisis aspects, issues of information security as an integral part of national security, the processes of forming national identity, issues of competitiveness, coherence of political elites.

The paper presents a brief essay of the life and work of the Russian writer of the last third of the XX century - the beginning of the XXI century Vladimir Makanin, characterized by the features of his prose in the framework of communicative roll of the works of writers known as ‘generation of the forties’. The author analyses the sociological aspects of the continuity of the literature of the period of ‘thaw’ (‘the sixties’) and the period of stagnation (‘the prose of the forties’). Special attention is paid to the realistic social typicality of the characters created by the writers of this literary movement. The study represents a comparative communication analysis of writings of the ‘lost generation’ and the ‘epoch of troubled times’ in the historical and literary context: from the writings of Benjamin Constant through the oeuvres of Alexander Pushkin to the writings of Alfred de Musset as appercieved by Mikhail Lermontov - as a dialogue between the two epochs. Russian writers of the postmodern period are interpreted in this paper by the successors of the global direction of the literature of the epochs of stagnation. This kind of character of the postwar and the post-thaw period of the country’s history is characteristic of the works of Vladimir Makanin. The writings of the ‘generation of the forties’ are compared here with the program works of V. Rasputin, V. Astafiev, Ch. Aitmatov, whose books have already entered the school educational standards on the history of Russian literature as reflecting the basic realistic typologies the typical characters of the epoch, and highlighting its aesthetic and ideological distortions.