COVID-19 Pandemic – new stage of social digital transformation

Abstract

The authors focus on the problems of social digital modernization, with COVID-19 pandemic being another stage in it. The pandemic crisis is considered by them as one of the global network threats of a new type. It is emphasized that amid the administrative restriction of physical contacts, digital networks fully unlock their communication potential and demonstrate the capacities of online formats of information consumption. At the same time, the network nature of virtual communication determines the specifics of social response to coronavirus crisis challenges which is expressed in infodemiological contamination of the media space. The context of the pandemic boosts innovative technological developments in different areas of human activity and encourages the spread of various useful online social practices, however, at the same time it allows assessing the degree and scope of risks connected with the forced digitalization of the sphere of the humanities. A new digital stratification of society, technologization and dehumanization of the social fabric, blurring the borders of human life privacy pervaded with different forms of external digital control are becoming real threats. The question of acceptable limits of state digital interference in civil rights and freedoms and, generally, the question of preserving the fundamental democratic values amid the global digital transformation are becoming relevant. The authors discuss the reinterpretation of the social contract main parameters at the new stage of social and technological development, also touching upon the project of its modification in the globalist sense, and make a conclusion about the need to focus on the cultural matrix and the existing social values when accomplishing the objectives of its digital reformatting.