Opportunities and features of the worldview formation in the digital communication environment: Based on the materials of an expert study

Abstract

This article is devoted to identifying the features of the formation and transformation of the worldview and its key components in the context of the intensive development of the modern digital communication environment. In this regard, the paper puts forward a research hypothesis that the digital information and communication environment, as well as digital communication technologies, mechanics, affordances and algorithms, are not value-neutral and have the potential to influence the content aspects of the worldview of individuals. To confirm this hypothesis, the authors carried out a discourse analysis of modern research on this issue, as well as an international expert study with the aggregation and analysis of the results. The article defines and discusses the peculiarities of the influence of digital tools on the mass perceptions of users of the digital environment about objective reality, as well as on traditional worldview and value-semantic models. Based on the results of the study, a conclusion was drawn about the high level of value coloring and the significant impact of the digital information and communication environment, as well as digital communication technologies, mechanics, affordances, and algorithms on the modern worldview of individuals. It is concluded that the modern space of digital communications has acquired an independent ontological status, which, in the context of a significant drop in the volume of direct experience of the interaction of individuals with reality, is the foundation for intensive replacement of traditional ways of understanding the world and of the formation of worldview ideas through real social interaction with digital, maximally virtualized ways of understanding the world. The authors also conclude that high speed and intensity, seeming randomness and multidirectionality, as well as the high dynamics of the structure of digital communications, determine the crisis of the value-semantic and worldview self-identification of a modern person.