The Concept of Digital Culture in the Remit of the Culturological Approach

Abstract

The authors examine the concept of digital culture, the elaboration of which within the culturological approach remains incomplete. It is noted that the coexistence in the scholarly discourse of such categories as “infor-mation culture”, “media culture”, and “digital competence”, with the absence of clear boundaries between them, generates a methodological inconsistency. An analysis of Western and Russian academic discourses reveals a fundamental divergence in their axiological foundations: the Western tradition describes digital culture as an immanent logic of technological development, whereas the domestic scholarship foregrounds the value trajec-tory of digitalization and its consequence for cultural identity. Employing the methodology of comparative-conceptual and structural analysis, the authors executed a distinction between the following concepts: “digital culture of society” and “digital culture of the individual”. At the same time, the last is defined as a historically developing system of meanings, norms, practices, and value orientations that constitute the subject’s interac-tion with the digital environment while preserving his or her identificational integrity.