Abstract:

The web culture is an expanding space where people from different countries interact with each other through various social groups and internet communities. The significance of the new culture type — virtual culture — is growing, while more activities constantly move to the so called digital field. In particular, web-based technologies have already become a substantial part of everybody's life. Virtual communication is considered to be one of the ways of personality self-realization and that assumes creative activity. Global changes have also transformed the sphere of education offering new internet-based forms of educational process. It will definitely increase the rate of knowledge production, but also requires obtaining new skills and competencies. Due to its convenience and flexibility, online learning has become attractive both for students and their teachers. Now almost all educational institutions in the world have their online-learning programs.

The paper focuses on the fanfiction and fan communities who form digital age modern folklore. For all intents and purposes creative work in the fanfiction genre is usually inspired by fiction - books, movies, video games, comic-books, etc. This phenomena helps young people to discover the power literature has in society. In this case fantastic stories often serve as a backdrop to the certain learning model. Thus, fanfiction works as an impulse for the literary skills development. The research is also dedicated to the communicative character of the fanfiction phenomena and educes main features alongside with perspectives of its using in educational processes. The relevance of the study is determined by the importance of analyzing nowadays communities under the conditions of the XXI century informational culture.

The Methodology basis of this study was formed by the expert’s work in the modern educational technologies domain. T. Kell, C. Shamburg, L. Schattenherz, K. Howell identified practical dimension of introducing fanfiction as an educational project. The research work results of cultural studies theorists (M. Ryabova, N. Samutina) emphasize socio-cultural basis of the fanfiction phenomenon, as well as literary scholars (E. Antipina, A. Prasolova) who embodied the interpretation strategies for the future projects also deserve attention. An anthropological approach to the researched problem should also be highlighted (K. Hellekson, K. Busse and S. Turkle) since it is related to the continuing interest in the problem of human existence in the future.

The fanfiction practices for school learning and for the self-education innovative model by E. Swaggerty and K. Bahoric who support modern literacy programs both in and outside of school should also be allocated. The interdisciplinarity of this research has identified a fundamental theoretical and methodological approach. The key method of the study is the interpretative analysis. Today fanfiction theoretical idea has already found practical implementation in educational practice. That indicates the enormous potential of the phenomenon and the need to expand its research field. Now advanced educational programs are digital analogs of traditional teaching practices. But fanfiction offers an innovative model of creative learning in a game form and makes to revise established educational models in terms of the possibilities offered by new formed virtual culture.

Keywords:

Digital age, internet culture, online communication, social identity, fanfiction phenomena, literacy practices, virtual communities.