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Social integration of immigrants into host communities is complicated by their cultural and language differences. The success of the process is determined by government policies and educational effectiveness that focus on socialisation and developing tolerance and intercultural interactions/communications. Using student data collected in educational organisations of southern Russia, this study examined the role of cultural characteristics in everyday interactions and analysed students' attitudes towards immigrants as cultural foreigners. About one-fifth of the respondents tended to distance themselves from immigrants/foreigners showing high levels of mistrust of immigrants and people with other religious backgrounds. The questionnaire results prove that the youth of Astrakhan Region tend to be the most tolerant to cultural foreigners, for the region was historically formed as ethnically mixed one. Young people of the Republic of Kalmykia are the least willing to accept representatives of other cultures and migrants, which might be a consequence of repressions against Kalmyks on an ethnocultural basis by the USSR government during the Second World War. The findings suggest that the educational system insufficiently addresses cultural diversity. This study clarifies that schools should have an active role in developing tolerance among students in southern Russia.

The article discusses the higher educational institutions transition problems to a distance learning operation mode during the pandemic, taking into account the technical universities work specifics. The article describes the problems that have arisen as a result of e-learning mode transition, as well as some solutions to these problems. The article focuses on: the teachers’ readiness problems; the e-courses quality for technical specialities students; the teachers’ developed materials copyright; virtual learning environments to replace the laboratory stands and equipment for students in distance learning process; distance learning educational process implementation technical support problems. The described problems’ proposed solutions’ implementation can be carried out in higher educational institutions without hiring additional personnel.

Journalism has been under much strain in the recent decades. It has had to adapt to the changing rhythms of media consumption as much as to the benevolence of social media networks that constantly change algorithms of how journalism is displayed. At the same time, viral communication of all sorts – from memes to GIFs and widespread amateur entertaining videos – is seen by millions. The purpose of this article is to examine the effort of online journalism to compete with viral storytelling. 'Viral journalism' is defined as the strategy and tactics to promote quality media stories on the internet in order to gain maximum exposure and sharing. This phenomenon is not to be mistaken with 'clickbait', which entails catchy, but often misleading, headlines. This article is based on qualitative interviews with a variety of social media editors and other journalists in the UK: from The Economist to The Guardian. It reveals that quality UK media deploy a range of inventive engaging tactics, but reject virality as a long-term strategy. The media professionals interviewed raised many concerns about virality, indicating that exploiting viral technics may result in reputational damage and alienating loyal readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015, the United Kingdom recognised 85% of asylum seekers from Syria as refugees, whereas Russia granted this form of protection to only 0.2% of those fleeing Syria. This research is an attempt to look into this dilemma: why did two countries, both signatories of the 1951 Geneva Convention, treat people in similar situations in such drastically different ways? The study of these two meaningfully contrasting cases argues that such factors as a split administrative asylum procedure, the covert nature of asylum policy, the one-sided character of the country of origin information, double-differential risk requirements, and the lack of availability of legal aid can produce a decisive impact on the recognition rate. If implemented, these factors allow the foreign policy of the country to dominate international or national legal obligations in status adjudications. As a result, asylum procedures become dependent on changes in diplomatic relations, opening the door to some groups of ‘amicable’ asylum seekers or shutting it on ‘undesirable’ ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2011–2012 Russian protest mobilisations were largely enabled by the rise of social networks. Social and technological advancements paired to pave the way for the ‘biggest protests since the fall of USSR’. Ubiquitous and uncensored social media facilitated the networking and mobilisation for this protest activity: Liberal masses were able to share and discuss their grievances, unite and coordinate online for the offline protest. The digitally savvy protest public developed to confront the government, which appeared to be astonished by the scale of protest. Those mobilisations marked an important gap between the government’s conception of the society and the real state of resistance. This article studies three main hypotheses regarding the potential of the protest movement in Russia. The hypotheses were drawn from recent sociological, political and media studies on Russian resistance. Current research aims to contribute to the debate from the digital media perspective. It therefore evaluates three main assumptions: Digital media have the potential to empower, dependent upon the relevant political, social and economic factors; digital media isolates protest publics and therefore may be more useful for the government than the resistance; and recent censorship of digital media communication signals a tightening of both formal and informal restrictions against opposition and protest politics. This article uses theoretical and factual evidence on the limitations of democracy and the public sphere and conceptualises the government’s management of resistance in Russia during and after the 2011–2012 protests. It studies how the hybrid political regime in Russia balances restrictions on freedom of speech with strengthened state propaganda and how it mediates media oppression and invites self-censorship. Finally, it examines how the state communication watchdog has recently focused its attention at the digital realm. This move confirms the importance of the online protest communication for the Russian political environment. Yet the state’s acknowledgement of digital political resistance may lead to further oppression and curbing of this emerging component of Russian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]