Communicative space of German-language social media

Abstract

The last decades were marked by the rapid development of communication technologies and electronic communication. Formation and popularization of electronic communication have significantly changed the nature of communication system as well as fundamental essence of interpersonal and social communication. Social media created electronic communicative space reflecting essential social processes in society and global changes of the world scale. The impact of means and forms of electronic communication on society, culture and language generates considerable interest on the part of scientists. Both new communication reality and strengthening of social media’s evolution dynamics that turned into the influential source of information resulted in the proactive efforts of traditional media sources in social networks. The presence of public figures in social networks acts as a modern determinant of their professional activity and success. Social networks Facebook and Instagram, in particular, have changed the mechanisms of mass communication extending the boundaries of media influence on society and formation of public conscience and opinion. The density of information flow leads to the increase in texts’ number whereas technical specificity of electronic space determines the creation of certain text messages – electronic texts. Electronic texts represent the combination of verbal and paraverbal expressive means aimed at the transmission of relevant information, individual communicant’s worldview and his/her social identity. Conciseness of the text is a distinctive feature of electronic communication. However, the analysed texts of German messages taken from social networks Facebook and Instagram, in particular, differ in the volume of explicit information and structure that depend on the communicative purposes of the message. The further linguistic analysis of German social media opens up interesting opportunities for the study of electronic communication and polyfunctional socio-communicative space.