Digital technologies in the Russians’ everyday life: analysis based on the opinion surveys

Economic Annals-ХХI: Volume 186, Issue 11-12, Pages: 134-142

Citation information:
Kamensky, E. (2020). Digital technologies in the Russians’ everyday life: analysis based on the opinion surveys. Economic Annals-XXI, 186(11-12), 134-142. doi: https://doi.org/10.21003/ea.V186-15


Evgeny Kamensky
PhD (Sociology),
Associate Professor,
Department of Philosophy and Sociology,
Faculty of Economics and Management,
Southwest State University
94, 50 Let Oktyabrya Str., Kursk, 305040, Russian Federation
kamenskyeg80@gmail.com
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1727-7167

Digital technologies in the Russians’ everyday life: analysis based on the opinion surveys

Abstract. Recently, the global COVID-19 pandemic has become the most topical matter of public consciousness. In this regard, digitalization, which offers the so called remote models of social communications, is becoming the most topical issue not only among the expert community of politicians, economists, scientists and public figures, but also among ordinary people. The global pandemic has determined both the speed and the global networked nature of the spread of the digital environment in national sociocultural contexts. This determines the special relevance of the problems of professional assessment of the digital environment in the mass consciousness of the Russians. The imperative digitalization of basic social institutions, such as medicine and education, requires the consumer to activate adaptive-compensatory reserves, master new forms of communication and interaction as well as a reflexive response. Basing on the carried out sociological empirical studies (mass surveys of the population), the article presents the results which allow us to see the current state of public reflection on digitalization against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, to objectively describe the subjective assessments of the spread of the DT culture thinking patterns and practices in the socio-cultural environment of Russia. As a result, it has been revealed that in all institutional practices, except for family ones, the respondents agree with the need to promote the implementation of digital technologies. The respondents did not demonstrate a high level of negativity or put forward proposals to significantly limit digitalization for all the questionnaire items. At this stage, it can be argued with a certain degree of certainty that digitalization patterns are translated in the context of the reproduction of sociocultural relations for which they have become typical.

Keywords: Industry 4.0; Digital Technology; Public Opinion; Social and Technical Landscape; Technological Progress; Social Changes

JEL Classification: О33; Р17; Z13

Acknowledgements and Funding: The research is financed by the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 19-18-00504 «Sociotechnical environment of digital reality: ontological matrices, ethical and axiological regulative structures, roadmaps, and information support for management decision-making».

Contribution: The author contributed personally to this work.

Data Availability Statement: The dataset is available from the author upon request. Access to the statistical databases of the study is provided on the resource sociokursk.ru (http://sociokursk.ru/?page_id=4703)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21003/ea.V186-15

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Received 14.09.2020
Received in revised form 23.10.2020
Accepted 26.10.2020
Available online 28.12.2020