Disciplinary Matrices of Interpretation of the «Social Technology» Concept: History of Global Experience

Abstract

Research methodology. The central task of our research was to study the main approaches to the interpretation of the «social technology» concept at the early stages of the development of applied social science. The author finds out the dominant trends of scientific analysis of communication technologies in the first concepts of social technologies. To achieve the study goal, we used the general scientific methods of system analysis, analogy, modeling, concretization and comparison.

Results. The article examines the history of the «social technology» concept consolidation in world science. The author focused on the initial stage of the development of disciplinary theories of social technology interpretation, which allowed to reveal humanitarian content in their representations. The research introduces into Ukraine scientific circulation the names of American and Western European researchers, who laid the methodological framework for a further understanding of these social and cultural phenomena of human existence. The research claims that in the late ХІХ – early ХХ centuries the world science formed the main methodological models of understanding technology, which are relevant to this day. The first model establishes the «technology» concept in terms of the field of design and production of technical systems; the second model relies on the definition of technology as any human attempt to regulate the physical and social world. The author notes that for the first time the «social technology» concept arises in the 80’s of the ХІХ century in the German humanists’ works.

Novelty. For the first time, the research performed a systematic analysis of social technologies and social engineering in the context of mediological problematic, and the newest world concepts of these notions introduced into the research structure considerably extend the methodological horizons of Ukraine science of social communications.

Practical significance. The research results can be a methodological model for further developments in applied science and contribute to the formation of transdisciplinary theory in the study of social communication technologies.

Key words: communication, modernization, publicity, propaganda, social technology, social work.