Displacement of cultural and information-communicative orders under the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The article summarizes the authors’ last year discussion of the research experience of studying the states of “emergencies” uncertainty and risks in sociology and their applicability to the study of social and sociocultural pandemic processes unfolding in Ukrainian society. It is emphasized that culture in its value-meaning and information-participatory dimensions remains on the margins of public attention under the pandemic, although its influence and consequences are significant and need close attention. There are three relevant areas of analysis: the value mentality of society, the information sphere of media and social networks, and the cultural participation of the population. To highlight the features of the current cultural and information-communication orders, the data of the monitoring study “Ukrainian Society – 2020” of the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and survey data of other domestic sociological centres were used. The tension and contradiction between the preferences of citizens for the values of “freedom”, “trust”, and “security”, as well as manifestations of imbalance in the value dichotomy of “public vs private”, are disclosed. The paper considers the phenomenon of infodemia, its factors and manifestations in Ukrainian society. The authors prove that the persistent scepticism of media audiences remains a hallmark of the information climate. Indicators of uncertainty about information sources are increasingly becoming markers of attitudes towards traditional and new media. Vagueness and ambiguity as characteristics of the trust phenomenon in the media correspond to the coronavirus pandemic’s new cultural and information-communicative orders. Changing the contexts of everyday life in the conditions of quarantine restrictions complicates the realization of professional and educational responsibilities and worsens the possibilities of cultural participation and recreation, which resonates with socio-economic, political, and technological limitations.