Abstract: This article is dedicated to examination of transformations in educational process during pandemic. Relevance of the selected topic is substantiated by the current cultural realities: contagion of coronavirus infection, quarantine, imposed restrictions, and thus, the need for restructuring communication channels in sociocultural reality, namely with regards to educational space. The goal consists in the analysis of new forms of communication, organizational education technologies that appeared in media space under the indicated circumstances. Characteristics is given to distance learning and communications means for its implementation. The author describes synchronous, asynchronous, and mixed learning techniques, as well as their substantive aspects. Such type of distance learning as online courses is being discussed. Particular attention is turned to the peculiarities of final academic assessment in the context of quarantine or self-isolation. In the conditions caused by pandemic, there emerges a need for more active usage of media space for arranging social, economic, and educational processes. The sphere of education, which is also related to health care of young generation, undergoes transformation taking into account the relevant sociocultural realities caused by pandemic. Such previously extracurricular forms of learning as synchronous, asynchronous, mixed, and online courses enjoy popularity, and even become essential. Final academic assessment in the conditions of imposed restrictions and distance learning acquires twofold meanings: on the one hand, there is a risk for distortion of perception of information in the course of graduate paper presentation, while on the other hand it forms a more comfortable psychological environment for the student due to being in a familiar environment. The newly established situation for culture and education in particular is the prime subject for researchers.  

Abstract: The author examines the role of speculative fiction as a cultural genre for detecting the grounds for its demand by the modern reader. Speculative fiction attracts its reader because its produces anxiety in his consciousness; its conceptual content instigates to constantly make a choice in favor or against the concordance of the events in media reality. The foundation for irreality (and the interest of audience) becomes the phenomenon of absurdity, which in the modern oeuvres is reflected in two levels: the direct encounter with the supernatural phenomenon of the text that causes the fluctuations with regards to reality; and the more profound identification of absurdity of the events in the text with absurdity of the reality that turns attention of the subject towards the most complicated questions of existence in the society. Namely such model of structuring the narrative allows the reader, who is interested in the literature on supernatural, to acquire a new experience of absurdity, first at the stage of meeting the irreality of the text, and then in returning to the absurdity of medial culture. The scientific novelty lies in clarification of the status of absurdity in modern culture based on the examples of the speculative fiction literature. A conclusion is made that the phenomenon of absurdity, which manifests as the grounds for supernatural aspect of the plot of this genre and a part of social being of the subject of culture, attains the constituting features with regards to media reality.