Sociomedia geospace of student cities in the North Caucasus

The article studies the relevance of social media in shaping the ideas of modern society about the world and developing the cities. The importance of cities in general and student cities in particular for the organization of space and the socio-economic well-being of the state is described. The review of literary sources in the field of imaginal geography, geographical research based on big data and obtained using modern technologies, and also describes the theoretical foundations associated with the study of student cities in Russia and abroad. The methodology of this study is described. A graph has been drawn up reflecting the main indicators of the student city and a model of the typology of student cities has been proposed. Key cities have been selected for a detailed geoinformation analysis of the sociomedia geospatial environment. A spatially distributed database of messages about key cities in social media has been created. In the future, it can be used for geoinformation support of marketing strategies for their development. Typical features of the territorial structure of the sociomedia geospatial of the student cities of the North Caucasus at the country, regional and municipal levels are revealed. Common features and differences of key cities have been identified in a number of indicators: the number of social media posts about the city, audience, engagement, CM Index, the share of publications outside the region, tonality, and others. It has been found that the student factor has too little influence on the representation of cities in social media, especially in the case of the city of Mineralnye Vody. A comparative analysis of sociomedia geospatial indicators for 2021 and 2025 has been carried out. The main factors that influenced the changes in the geospatial structure over the past four years have been identified.