The authors used the method of quantitative and qualitative content analysis to study the online discourse of students in order to classify the elements of the commentary text. The analysis revealed certain cases, patterns, and phenomena that could be described as regular. The research featured several communities in the VKontakte social network connected with the Kemerovo State University. The online discourse demonstrated some linguistic peculiarities. The main discussion topics differed in values, judgments, emotional tone, creativity, and self-expression: academic process, life management, relationships (friendship, love, and family), health, existential issues (social role and future), and social criticism. The functions involved identification, information, affiliation, psychotherapy, and creativity. By learning the features of online communication, academic staff can develop effective and consistent communication with students. The informal linguistic environment of social nets contains extralinguistic factors that manifest themselves in online discourse and reveals the ideology of young people, their values, attitudes, and opinions on important matters.

The article describes the traditions of magical realism in M. Shishkin's  Letter Book and N. Abgaryan's Simon. The research involved comparative, mytho-poetic, hermeneutic, formal, and structural methods. V. I. Tyupa's theory of artistic discourse and F. Schlegel's idea of irony served as the basic theory in identifying the motifs associated with magical realism and generated by the ironic type of artistic completion. The term of magical realism covers works that belong to very different literary movements. The authors used the ironic type of aesthetic completion to explain similar elements in different poetics of magical realism fiction. The traditions of magical realism in the twentieth-century fiction revealed the following features: an ironic type of artistic integrity; dual worlds and miracles; fantasy intertwined with reality; myths, traditions, and legends; archetypes (father, savior, eternal lover, etc.) and symbols (tree, sea, etc.); unmotivated fantasy; fantastical timeline with no clear boundaries between the past and the future; a highly rhythmical pattern, etc.

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Narrative and storytelling involve social net users in various socio-psychological groups. Modern narrative psychology focuses on life purpose formation. Narrative as an interpretive process concerns almost all spheres of everyday life and correlates with subjective and intersubjective experiences. Narrative studies are a source of knowledge on how a person endows the world, life, and goal-setting with meaning. Observing the interpretation of one’s experience can reveal how subjectivity works. Narrative makes it possible to construct the world, as well as to comprehend it in terms of past, present, and future. Psychology of meaning formation brings us closer to personality and inner subjectivity. Storytelling is popular both on the Internet and in various branches of scientific knowledge, marketing, linguistics, psychology, pedagogy, and journalism. Storytelling is used in existential psychology, logotherapy, and art therapy. Personal experience verbalized as a story reveals one’s personality, values, and beliefs. Storytelling makes one feel complete, helps to find a purpose in life, and facilitates psycho-corrective activities. Storytelling in online socio-psychological groups possesses all the features of a narrative. For instance, the Vkontakte social network allows its users to employ all the features of narration, thus involving the audience in communication and influencing their psyche. Based on content analysis and hermeneutic approach, the authors identified such involvement technologies as suggestion, persuasion, and emotional infection. Storytelling is not only a means of promoting psychological services in socio-psychological groups, but also a means of psycho-correction and psychological impact. It develops relevant meanings in the addressee, personal development, self-help, and stress relief.