The article aims to explore the phenomenon of the new media and their dual nature. The objective of the study is to investigate the essential attributes of the new media and present them as a set of binary oppositions: real – virtual, private – public, interpersonal – mass, broadcast – interaction. The author analyzes the new media as a sphere of virtual social being of the modern people, where they are faced with such issues as self-identification, adaptation, responsibility, distinction between true and false or private and public. On the one hand, the diffusion of real and virtual spheres turns online environment into a source of significant social connections. On the other hand, this gives the network identity a playful and changeable nature. Due to broadcasting and interactional models of mass communication coexisting simultaneously, a user immerses into the communication flows of everyone with everyone, where they could be both an influential creator and distributor of content, or a participant of endless chats for the sake of chats themselves. The diffusion between the interpersonal and mass communication leads to plurality and instability of the contexts to which a user belongs. The article examines the conflict potential of online activity through the opposition between the private and public spheres. It describes such effects as erosion of a genuinely public sphere, blending of the opposite social contexts, the phenomenon of hyperpublicity. In conclusion the author discusses a question about the creative activity of the Internet users and emphasizes that the new media environment provides them with opportunities for constructing self-narrative and joining into the global process of sharing ideas, meanings and digital artefacts. As a result, the users expand the borders of their own world, become more autonomous and self-actualizing.

This paper examines the social and creative practices of new media users, identifies their varieties from the point of view of the product and subject of this activity, analyzes their nature through the characteristics of the properties of the online space and through the prism of ideas about the network society. Creativity, in general, is considered in the context of the communicative approach, according to which the creative act involves not only the creation of a new, never-before-seen but also is realized when its result is included in the social context. In addition, social creativity is defined as an activity aimed at transforming social space, the product of which can be new practices, norms, values, and organizational forms of individuals. Ideas about the systemforming role of information and communication technologies in the structure of modern society allow M. Castells and J. van Dijk to characterize it as a network, whose members are included in many communities (including virtual ones) and discourses. Participation in mediated horizontal communications requires individuals to be socially active and creative. The environment of the global information network, its variability and novelty motivate the user to engage in social and creative practices. The work proposes a classification of the latter on two grounds: in terms of the subject, we can talk about individual and collective practices, in terms of the creativity result, practices are allocated to aimed at the production of digital artifacts, the implementation of socially-active activities or the creation of social samples. The author concludes that participation in creative practices allows the users to realize social and communicative needs and, ultimately, to declare their existence in the virtual world.

The study is devoted to a relevant topic – the analysis of the media representation of religiousness in modern Russian society based on media materials. In the scientific literature, there are various assessments of religious media discourse: some authors argue that the media reflect and others that the media distort the real situation. The study presents the idea that the ambiguity of assessments of the level of religiousness and its features is only partially explained by ideological differences between the discourses. To a large extent, such ambiguity is formed as a consequence of the instability of religious identification. Media materials note the superficial nature of religious consciousness, which is evidenced by the low level of churching, predominantly ceremonial nature of religious practice, and shallow knowledge of the essence of dogma. However, according to the authors of the study, an insufficiently high level of religious culture should not be assessed as a profanation of faith. The analysis of the texts published in Russian printed and online media shows that the image of religiousness in the secular segment of the information field differs from the media of different political orientations.