Digitalization as a Sociocultural Characteristic of the

Globalization Era
Vardan Atoyan, Ohanyan Sofya, Nane Movsisyan, Vahram Hovyan

To cite this version:

Vardan Atoyan, Ohanyan Sofya, Nane Movsisyan, Vahram Hovyan. Digitalization as a Sociocultural
Characteristic of the Globalization Era. Saudi Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2023, 8 (9),
pp.296-299. �10.36348/sjhss.2023.v08i09.008�. �hal-04219346�

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 Saudi Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences
Abbreviated Key Title: Saudi J Humanities Soc Sci
ISSN 2415-6256 (Print) | ISSN 2415-6248 (Online)
Scholars Middle East Publishers, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
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Review Article

Digitalization as a Sociocultural Characteristic of the Globalization Era

Vardan Atoyan1* , Sofya Ohanyan2 , Nane Movsisyan3 , Vahram Hovyan4
1Doctor of Sciences (Political Science), Head of Social Sciences Department, Armenian State University of Economics, Yerevan,
Armenia
2PhD in Philosophy, Associate Professor of Social Sciences Department, Armenian State University of Economics, Yerevan, Armenia
3PhD in Philosophy, Associate Professor of Social Sciences Department, Armenian State University of Economics, Yerevan, Armenia
4Lecturer of Social Sciences Department, Armenian State University of Economics, Yerevan, Armenia

DOI: 10.36348/sjhss.2023.v08i09.008 | Received: 14.08.2023 | Accepted: 22.09.2023 | Published: 25.09.2023

*Corresponding author: Vardan Atoyan
Doctor of Sciences (Political Science), Head of Social Sciences Department, Armenian State University of Economics, Yerevan,
Armenia

Abstract
The research is dedicated to investigating the sociocultural characteristics of digitalization. The Digital Age has a great
impact on the formation of individuals’ moral consciousness, and the main trends of digitalization and modern social
development are examined in this work. The peculiarities of the influence of information and communication technologies
on the formation of the value system of individuals are analyzed. The authors consider digitalization in the context of the
formation of the world’s digital image and a digital individual. The problem of comprehension of digitalization processes
in science and philosophy is presented. An examination of concepts such as “digitalization”, “information society”, and
“social network” is carried out. The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that digitization and, by extension,
informatization, are developing and significantly expanding the horizons of global scientific, technical, and socio-economic
progress. Together, these lead to serious interactions between the ultramodern and traditional, the latter being formed over
centuries’ of events in institutions and structures, but rapidly transformed in the the world of social communications. With
traditional societies increasingly replaced by those which are virtually augmented, additional grounds are created for vast
changes in various spheres of public life, in increasingly numerous locations, and sometimes also creating bases for the
growth of instability and conflicts. The work aims to show the effect of digitalization on the value system of individuals,
especially young people, based on theoretical analysis.The research methodology focuses upon a conceptualization of the
phase model of digitalization, the problem of social Internet networks, the theory of the Information Age.
Keywords: digitalization, information age, information society, culture, value system, social internet network, virtual
community.
Copyright © 2023 The Author(s): This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License (CC BY-NC 4.0) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium for non-commercial use provided the original
author and source are credited.

primarily by a deep involvement in digital technologies,

INTRODUCTION and its emergence coincides with the global development
An inseparable characteristic of the constantly and universal implementation of digital technologies and
changing world is globalization which is aimed at processes.
changing processes meanwhile digital technologies are
actively introduced into all spheres of social life.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Digitalization is not only an engine of global There is no universal and unequivocally
social development but it is a process which also acceptable definition of the concept of “digitalization”.
fundamentally changes patterns of thinking and the More often, digitalization is viewed as a new era which
means of perceiving the surrounding reality, while is based on and creates “big data” and other appropriate
introducing new rules of behavior. This was especially technologies. Therein, artificial intelligence and machine
evident in the case of the Y generation: it is the learning methods generate new tools for productivity
Millennial’s “next” or “network” generation which increases and for comprehending the existing data
consists of people who were born during 1981 and 1996, deluge (Anderson, 2008).
and welcomed the new millennium at a young age
(Radaev, 2018). This generation is characterized There are several philosophical definitions of
digitalization. Some authors assume digitalization to be
Citation: Vardan Atoyan, Sofya Ohanyan, Nane Movsisyan, Vahram Hovyan (2023). Digitalization as a Sociocultural 296
Characteristic of the Globalization Era. Saudi J. Humanities Soc Sci, 8(9): 296-299.
 Vardan Atoyan et al; Saudi J. Humanities Soc Sci, Sep, 2023; 8(9): 296-299

“the development and application of the technologies of a digital society is a certain outcome of technological
that use the ideas of discreteness, computability, innovations and changes in social relations. Manuel
programmability, and algorithmicity”. Accordingly, Castells (2010) underlines the “networked” nature of the
such scholarship further suggests digitalization has information society. Anthony Giddens (1990) presents
entered all manifestations of modern technical the modern era as the product of an individual’s
achievements: in computers and communications, separation from natural factors, technological
education and biotechnology, nanotechnology and modernization, and, consequently, the emergence of
astrophysics, specialty software, the Internet of Things computer technologies as sources of information storage,
(IoT), drones, and smart cities. Consequently, a common assigning a dominant role in such a society to the nation-
basis for the wide use of based on special automating state, endowed with strong administrative and military
algorithms (Lectorsky, 2019; Molchan, 2019). power and with a unique culture; culture in this instance
is a sphere that reflects social innovations.
Still other authors, shifting digitalization into an
anthropological discourse, define it as “the transfer of a According to the classification scheme
person to a virtual reality. This results in dangers forming presented above, we can presume that the active creation
related to the dehumanization of a person, dependence of social media networks initiated the third stage of
on gadgets and computer systems - the disease of digitalization thereby accelerating globalization
humanity of the Digital Age” (Lektorskiy, 2019). processes worldwide.

Digitalization as a social phenomenon spread in For the first time the term “social network” was
the 60s-70s of the 20th century, and is defined by three put into circulation by John Arundel Barnes in the work
main characteristics. Firstly, personal characteristics are “Class and Committees in a Norwegian Island Parish”
being transformed into digital artifacts, data, and tools, (1954). Barnes connected this concept with the forms of
thus becoming mobile, individualized, and abstracted. In communication found in small social groups. Today,
this context, communication acquires a network scholars define a social network as a social structure
structure on the Internet. However, as people come into composed of a group of units and factors connected by
increasing contact with and consciousness of the data friendship, parental ties, and economic exchange, or
they create, they gain greater control over that data and other social relations where each occupies a specific
the information they communicate. They are granted position in the society. Social interactions in such
opportunities to work with organizations that have structures are studied by network theory.
requirements and goals which demand information.
Through collective needs, people collectively build However, network theory (Castells, 2010)
individual and group paths for the generation of describes and identifies not all processes occurring in
information and data that will promote more global modern social networks. Network theory emphasizes a
communication between people, organizations, and group of units (social actors) and the connections among
countries. This task is aided, secondly, by the fact that them (social interaction) regarding resource sharing.
communication technologies are getting more common Revealing the structure of the interaction of the system
and more manageable. Finally, there is a transition to a components, the theory of networks does not touch on
networked communication form. the issues of the influence of the community of actors on
the individual participant. In other words, according to
Consequently, researchers distinguish five stages of this theory, it is quite difficult to explain the impact of
digitalization (Schuman & Scott, 1989): virtual communities, par excellence, on the formation of
1. The launch of computer and information people’s value orientations.
sciences from the Second World War until the
beginning of the 70s of XX century; As described by Boyd and Ellison (2007), a
2. The creation and proliferation of the first social network site is an Internet-based service that
personal computers (early 80s - mid 90s of XX enables individual users to establish open or semi-open
century); profiles, encompassing a range of attributes such as
3. The emergence of the Internet (mid-90s - early gender, age, educational background, and geographic
2000s); location, which collectively define their personality.
4. The expansion of digitization practices using Additionally, users on such platforms can compile and
the Web 2.0 methodology since 2013; view a list of their connections, referred to as “friends”,
5. The exploitation of digital architectures to thereby constructing and accessing their personal social
create and spread of digital models of networks. Moreover, they have the capability to access
production and economy. the contact lists of their “friends”, granting them insight
into the social networks of other users within the system.
It is in this context that Alvin Toffler (1980)
perceived the information society as the final level of In online social networks, one’s geographical
civilizational development; in his opinion, the formation location no longer matters. People who live in the same

© 2023 | Published by Scholars Middle East Publishers, Dubai, United Arab Emirates 297
 Vardan Atoyan et al; Saudi J. Humanities Soc Sci, Sep, 2023; 8(9): 296-299

city or even neighborhood may not meet but belong to 2019). Therefore, young people are more susceptible to
the same Internet community. Real communities depend the influence of social media networks because their
on an individual’s location, affiliation with a particular value systems remain under development and are
religion or tradition, and so on. But in the case of online sometimes unstable,
social communities, geography is rendered of negligible
importance, and secondly, as a result of low barriers to Many problems are revealed when we look at
communication, interactions are formed between users virtual social networks from the standpoint of different
belonging to completely different cultural, religious, social theories. The nagging persistence of a digital
national, and other communities, and therefore endowed divide, as well as inequality among users on social
with different value systems. networks underscores wider disparities whose existence
belies a potential for some serious conflicts in which
DISCUSSION users, community stakeholders, and the state may be
Social Internet networks prominently depict the involved.
processes of globalization taking place in the world.
Information boundaries are being erased, and a unified Other serious problems are related to user
cultural space is formed based on online social networks, security, the manipulation of user activity through virtual
and the concomitant removal of cultural boundaries. social networks, and the existence of control
Some predominant cultures get a chance to spread to mechanisms. The public sphere can be transformed
other countries, and others less so, while new cultural through manipulations of both the official mass media
connection, interactions, and conflicts occur without and virtual communities themselves, resulting in a
control in the center and at the margins. “blurring” of the fundamental values of society
(Habermas, 1984).
On the one hand, each of us can get acquainted
with this or that culture, values, traditions, and norms, CONCLUSION
where there are no other barriers besides language. On Digitalization is a process of formation and
the other hand, the diversity of values in social Internet transformation of value orientations of people. In young
networks allows us to parse online etiquette and values people especially, value orientations acquire a
from those found in daily life. In the digital environment, contradictory character under the influence of
one can encounter different sets of value systems that do digitalization. In becoming a member of a virtual
not coincide with the value system of the user’s social community, the user is impacted by the presented values
environment. and their altered value orientations to a greater or lesser
extent. Young people are specifically susceptible to such
Social media developers create tools for influence because their value systems are still in
advertising this or that community and provide access to formation which determines its instability and the
analytical data of the platforms which relate to users’ possibility of transformation by external effect.
gender, age, number of channel followers, average daily
audience coverage, and “feedback” indicators, and other ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
characteristics. These tools allow administrators to This study was conducted within the framework
structure information and adapt to their audience, but of the research project “Value orientations of students in
these metadata are also tools for shaping public opinion. the digital age” of the AMBERD Research Center,
Therefore, the source of the presented content - the Armenian State University of Economics. In this regard,
administrator, the user, or the advertiser - can influence the authors express their gratitude to the AMBERD
users’ value orientations in the virtual community. Center for support in the publication of this paper. The
authors also thank Logan Brosius for his support in
Since the formation of social networks, we have proofreading the manuscript.
observed that users seek to form virtual communities and
participants in Internet networks strive to communicate Conflict of Interest: The authors declare no ethical
with as many users as possible. Currently, this leads to issues or conflicts of interest in this research.
the formation of virtual communities of participants who
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