The phenomenon of identity in the social construction of virtual reality

Abstract

This paper examines the interactions between the processes of social institution virtualization, information and communication practices; as well as the processes of construction of valuesemantic structures of individual and collective identities. Authors support the idea that determining how a person generates virtual reality and how virtual reality develops a person is the primary focus of phenomenological analysis and socio-philosophical research on identity transitions in current circumstances. The early phenomenological texts of M.M. Bakhtin serve as an illustration of the virtuality presented in intentional identity formations. Authors demonstrated that the interactive modeling of the I-for-myself relationship to the virtual presence of the other is where the noetic-noematic field of identity is generated. The sociology of knowledge is among the most promising approaches for locating intentional identity structures in people’s and social groupings’ daily lives. The social construction of reality is seen as an objective socio-historical process that shapes the reality of the intersubjective world according to its paradigm. We argue that changes in the semantic contexts of individual and social community identification are shown to be functionally related to the virtualization of the information and communication field of intersubjectivity. Social groups no longer serve as the fundamental building blocks of social existence in the modern world; instead, they do exist virtually now. Authors do follow Z. Bauman’s idea that virtual groups, which emerge haphazardly and then abruptly disintegrate into so-called communities (Z. Bauman), become modeling systems of identity. The final statement of paper is that the emergence of the Internet acted as a catalyst for the explosive acceleration, and eventually as a primary method of global deployment, of the processes of formation of new types of identity, new models, and strategies for its construction through risky experiments and unrestrained play with various versions of one’s own identity.