To Moscow ot to Saint Petersburg? Population gravity of the Tver Region according to the data of «VKontakte» online network

The article is devoted to the studying the populations attraction to large centers. On the example of the Tver region it is shown how the position between capitals affects the characteristics of population movement. Due to the lack of official statistics at the municipal district level, the main source of information in this work were the data of the VKontakte social network. At the first stage, aggregated materials of the Virtual Population of Russia site were used. At the second stage, the communities of some rural settlements in the VKontakte network were studied. The main centers of attraction for the population of the Tver region are Tver, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and the capitals share their areas of influence almost equally. The northern districts gravitate towards St. Petersburg, the southern towards Moscow. The urban population, including the population of Rzhev, Torzhok and Bezhetsk, gravitates towards Moscow, and the rural population of the region gravitates towards St. Petersburg. The obtained conclusions actualize and complement the results of previous work on the topic.