Research of the Main Actors of the Russian Digital Economy’ Social Field: a Thematic Analysis

Relevance. The article presents the results of a thematic analysis of interviews with various social fields' (culture, science, education, finance, IT technologies and the economy) agents who take part in the activities of the Russian digital economy’ social field.
The purpose – a qualitative study of the agents of social fields that have formed the Russian digital economy’ social field.
Objectives: determine the support level by the interviewed agents of the need and feasibility of the digital economy development; to identify the explicit and latent goals, role and tasks of the fields, whose interests are represented by the interviewees; determine the personal social characteristics of the interviewees.
Methodology. The method of thematic analysis was used for the study. The empirical base of the article is expert interviews with agents of social fields taking part in the work of the Russian digital economy’ social field, performed in September-December 2020 as part of the project "Russian Digital Economy as a Social Field".
Results. Most of the interviewed agents, actors in the social field of the digital economy, support the need and feasibility of developing the digital economy. The exception is a part of small business representatives who do not support the process of the economy digitalization, indicating a low level of modernization and control over responsibility. The opinion leader of the cultural field also does not support the widespread introduction of digitalization.
Personal social characteristics of agents lead to the conclusion that professional actions of no more than 60 percent of respondents are comfortable and based on use of their effective capital.
Conclusions. The use of thematic analysis as a research method made it possible to partially verify the developed a priori model of the Russian digital economy’ social field. At the same time, the expediency of additional studies of the economic field and the culture field’ agents for a more accurate reasons determination for their low support of the digitalization process was revealed.

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