Socio-cultural Relations and Communications in the Post-Pandemic World: Global Reversal or Situational Crisis of Postmodernism

Abstract

The world of late globalization is distinguished by duality and internal contradictions in socio-cultural relations and communications, which reflects in the crisis of universal models of social behavior. The only area where the principles of social universality remain relevant is the sphere of communications, where active development of new formats and the emergence of new cultural proto-artifacts continues. The coronavirus pandemic has altered the logic of development in this segment of global interaction, since it affected the very foundations of universal social behavior models. Socio-cultural relations, due to a complex of reasons, are becoming a sphere where tendencies interact and compete as well as institutions associated with the period of late globalization, including those that emerged on the wave of its crisis. At the same time, the communication environment becomes extremely important, since new technologies will make it possible to reflect not only macro-trends, but also the evolution of micro-cultures, which, in the context of a systemic (institutional) crisis of globalization, are becoming more important than usual. This symbiotic socio-cultural-communication phenomenon can become one of the most important factors in determining future models of global development. The article analyzes the most important directions of development of the sphere of socio-cultural communications and their transformation in 2020-2021. The article amplifies whether the trends for socio-cultural developments that formed through the pandemic crisis lead towards the formation of a new model of socio-cultural development or such trends remain within the traditional framework. The major conclusion is that the formation of the model has not started yet though the risk of distraction of global socio-cultural – and probably social universality – became obvious. Conclusions are made regarding further transformation of the sphere of socio-cultural development in the current information environment.