Identity of a Subject in the Socio-Cultural Reality of Digital Society

Abstract

Aim. To identify the specifics of the subject’s identity in the social reality of modern society, subject to digitalization, which produces new forms of interaction between individual and collective subjects.

Methodology. The complexity, dynamics, and emergent properties of the subject’s identity are considered, taking into account the transformations that have arisen against the backdrop of the digital era. The study uses the method of socio-philosophical analysis of the transformations of social reality, the source of which is information technology, generating variability in identity, radically changing the value orientations of the subject and society as a whole. In addition, an interpretation method was used, which made it possible to generalize the dialectic of stability and variability of the subject’s identity in modern society.

Results. It was revealed that social reality has expanded the space of subjective interactions, radically influencing the choice of guidelines for individual identity. The susceptibility to atomization and fluidity of the identity of the collective subject has been established, which indicates deep, essential breaks with traditional sociocultural archetypes. Conclusions are drawn about an impending bifurcation on a societal scale, where the slightest fluctuations can cause radical changes in society. The specifics of digitalization force it to change exponentially, inevitably affecting the identification of the subject.

Research implications is an attempt to rethink the view of the essence of identity, to emphasize the urgency of the problem of preserving and reproducing cultural values, to identify the responsibility of social institutions for a new quality of the semantic picture of the world at the personal level.