Digitalization of Global Society: From the Emerging Social Reality to its Sociological Conceptualisation

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to consider three important issues from the point of view of synergetic theory: global digitalization of society, digitalization of public administration and sociology of digital society. We consider that the new trend of informatization, which replaced computerization, internetization and networkization, should be recognized as digitalization as the creation of digital network platforms that have analytical and predictive functions. In the process of studying the global digital society, two main questions will be asked: How is it different from the previous stage of information society? What problems of its development await us in the future? The authors reveal the last question with a scenario approach, denoting both a positive and an ambiguous perspective for the development of a digital society. The authors point to the need for the purposeful formation of social institutions in a digital society due to the complexity of the ongoing self-organizing processes. Consideration of the sociology of digital society begins with methodological problems associated with the study of a complex hybrid system due to the unification of real and virtual social spaces, the emergence of techno-subjects and some experience in the use of digital tools in sociology, allowing to work with interactive dynamic data.