THE BLOGOSPHERE AS AN INNOVATIVE SOCIAL PLATFORM OF MISSIONARY ACTIVITY: SPECIFICITY AND CAPABILITIESS

Abstract

The article deals with the features of the blogosphere as an innovative social platform for missionary activity and pastoral ministry on the Internet. The main advantages and difficulties of Orthodox pastoral missionary practice in the virtual space are explained. The author’s religioustheological understanding of the concepts of «blog», «blogger», «blogosphere» is interpreted and the most established types of blogs are identified and their peculiarities are characterized. A blog classification system has been formulated and substantiated, which is based on four distinctive features:
1) authorship (one author or author’s team),
2) multimedia availability,
3) ideological value orientation and content,
4) technical base.
The main content of the article is a scientific and theological reflection of the missionary activities of clergymen in the blogosphere. Therefore, the methodological toolkit (methods, methods, socio-psychological, pedagogical and proper pastoral techniques) is thoroughly characterized. The peculiarities of communication via blogs are analyzed, whose the main goal, on the one hand, is studying jointly the foundations of the Orthodox faith, moral and ethical principles and social doctrine of the Church, and, on the other hand, the formation of a dynamic universal (world) Orthodox information envelope with its memes as units of socio-religious and spiritualcultural interaction. Considering the blogosphere as an integral part of the communicative space of the Internet, research has also focused on identifying dysfunction, its explicit and latent functions.