Galina U. Soldatova

Relevance. Multitasking gets defined socially and dominating with the development of information technologies. It becomes the system of requirements and possibilities for combining, switching and alternating activities of different forms and contents within one complex activity. As a consequence of the technological development of the information society and a result of worldview transformations within the framework of the paradigm of multiplicity of the postmodern culture, the phenomenon of multitasking as a complex form of the activity in the technologized society becomes one of relevant objects of research in psychology and other sciences of man.

Purpose. The theoretical analysis of the phenomenon of multitasking as a reflection of a multifaceted nature and variability of the postmodern culture and a result of the entry of digital technologies of the information society into the daily life in the context of the concepts of multiplicity and complexity.

Method. The logic and methodology of the study is based on the cultural-historical and activity-based and semantic paradigm. The theoretical and comparative analyses and the method of generalization are employed to achieve the defined goals.

Results. The philosophical analysis of socio-cultural, worldview and technological factors that determine the nature of multitasking is carried out. It shows the role of certain philosophical constructs of the postmodern worldview, particular technologies of the information society in developing the basis for the emergence of the phenomenon of multitasking and also its technological embodiment — mediamultitasking.

Conclusions. At present, multitasking is the practice imposed by the specific nature of the information-communication activity under the technologization and complexity of the modern realities. Regardless of the attitude to this phenomenon, multitasking is an objective fact of the culture of the information society and, as a result, is one of the prerequisites for an efficient activity under its conditions.

Acknowledgements: the present study is supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project 19-29-14181 “Multitasking in the Structure of the Digital Socialization: Cognitive and Personal Factors of Efficiency in the Context of the Digitalization of General Education”.

Relevance. Modern society creates the image of a successful person as actively interacting with different information flows, including an impressive stream of news content. This paper assumes that there is a personal need for tracking and spreading news that develops in the interaction between a person and digital world. The individual level of this need could explain the interaction with information (its critical and uncritical dissemination) and the subjective experience of its redundancy and inaccuracy, including those experiences and actions in a pandemic situation. 

The aim of the study was to reveal the relationship of the subjective need for news with personal values, beliefs about technologies (“technophilia”) and the dissemination of news about the pandemic. 

Method. 270 people (aged 18 to 61) filled out The short (Schwartz) Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ), Beliefs about New Technologies Questionnaire, Monitoring of Information about Coronavirus Scale as well as items on the subjective need for receiving and disseminating news, readiness for critical and non-critical dissemination of news about pandemics, subjective experiences of redundancy and distrust of pandemic-related information. 

Results. According to the results, the Need for News Scale allows assessing the subjective importance of receiving news and discussing them with other people and is characterized by sufficient consistency and factor validity. The need for regular news is more pronounced among men, older people, people with higher education, married people, people who have children, while the need to discuss news is not related to sociodemographic factors. For people who are more prone to technophilia it is more important to regularly receive and discuss news information with others, which, in turn, mediates the relationship between technophilia and monitoring news about coronavirus. The need for news dissemination mediates the relationship between technophilia and readiness for critical and non-critical dissemination of information about the pandemic.

Acknowledgement: The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project No 18-18-00365 "Digital socialization of cultural-historical perspective: intragenerational and intergenerational analysis".