New media in contemporary cyberculture: on their specifics as a form of digital communication
The paper aims to theoretically contribute to speculation on the specifics of new media in the emerging cyberculture from the dialectical perspective, which helps avoid extremism both in technodeterminist and cyberoptimist discourses that imply that it is technology that society and culture are centred around, and in socioconstructivist discourse that suggests that it is society that forms technology. The topic turns even more relevant amidst the COVID-19 pandemic - when digital communication changes its status from a convenient instrument to a necessity. As for the theoretical basis, the authors follow the concept of informational revolutions, developed by Russian scientist A.I. Rakitov, and the concept of C.A. Scolari (complementing them with the theories of M.B.N. Hansen, K. Hayles, L. Manovich, S. McMillan, and other contemporary philosophers and media theorists), who analyses new communication forms that appear as a result of the cultural convergence of the media and language through the concepts of digitalisation, hypertextuality, multimedia, reticularity, and interactivity. The authors conclude that interactivity where a user acts both as a Participant and an Observant and thus extends his/her direct involvement in the cyberworld and the real world is the leading one of these five main specifics of new media (except digitalisation, as it gives rise to all the others). This manifests the emergence of the phenomenon of digital activity, which has both advantages and downsides.