Psychological Features Of Sense Of Ownership Realization In Social Networks

Social networks, digital accounts are seen as a space for realizing a sense of ownership and are perceived by information entities as their own space with all attributes of ownership. The concept of sense of ownership and peculiarities of its manifestation in social networks are analyzed. A sense of ownership of virtual space is understood as the psychological feeling that virtual space, an account, created content, etc. belong to you and the person can mark as «my» or «mine». The issue of psychological nature of the personal virtual space is raised and an attempt is made to find answers to the questions about the presence and qualitative expression of changes in the phenomenology of experiencing the possession, identity by the subject, whose psychic functions are increasingly activated not in the conditions of traditional dialogical communication, but with information overflowing in the media space, hyperreality and hypertext. The results of social networks users study about their experiences and psychological ownership of their own account or profile are presented. It was shown that the sense of ownership of virtual space has the same characteristics as in real space: self-investment, territory (platform), self-identification (virtual identity), self-efficacy, protection, ability to control, personalization, and fear of losing. It is shown that women have a higher level of ownership than men. They are more involved in the creation of own content, discussions, a more intense experience of ownership and psychological desire for appropriation, and the fear of losing. Virtual space and own account are associated with a specific territory or thing. Young internet users have stronger feeling that their virtual space belongs to them only. They show a much higher level of identification with their own profile, fear of losing it, and a willingness to create content than the older generation. There is a significant distortion of virtual identity, which consists in the biased evaluation of the representation of one's own and other's life on social networks.