The digitalization of higher education is a long-term trend that gained a new impetus for further development because of the forced transition to distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of the article is to analyze the impact of digital transformation on the educational process in universities and to describe the risks through the students’ eyes. The analysis is based on the results of a survey conducted by the authors in 2020 among students of two universities - Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) and the Institute of the Trade Union Movement of the General Confederation of Labor of Vietnam (IPLV).The article describes the methodology of the online survey. The attitude towards distance learning is interpreted as a three-level attitude with emotional, cognitive and behavioral aspects. It is suggested that students’ readiness to switch to distance learning is determined by a set of macro and micro factors. Among the macro factors are the national specifics of the educational system, traditions in the field of higher education, infrastructure, the national educational policy, and the mobilization potential of the population. Among the micro factors are the cognitive and other psychological characteristics of the students, the socio-psychological openness to innovation.According to the survey results, there is certain similarity in the way Russian and Vietnamese students assess their experience of distance learning. At the same time, significant differences in the perception of the outcome of the digital transformation of education have been revealed. For MGIMO students, major risks are associated with dehumanization, the severing of social ties, and the possible loss of student status. For Vietnamese students the most significant risks are mainly associated with the fears of the decreasing quality of education. It is therefore concluded that distance learning is both the field of opportunities and possible source of individual and institutional risks.

This study investigates the conditions of digital society development. All probable unintended consequences of digitalization require the development of a science-based approach to manage this digital development. However, there is a problem associated with the divergence in the assessment of the digitalization effects by representatives of the information technology sector responsible for the new technologies development and by representatives of social sciences studying the impact of digitalization on social relations, institutions and processes. Authors propose a new approach to understanding new digital reality based on so-called sociotechnical turn, which is a purely integrative approach aimed at solving a tough common issue. Moreover, the article proposes a theoretical analysis of sociological and technological discourses of the society digitalization problem. To define and structure the set of differences, there were conducted 5 in-depth interviews with specialists from the technical field, aiming to gather information both from applied experts and more science-oriented participants. The study has revealed that those who perform tasks set under the digitalization agenda may not be aware of the social consequences of their work. They follow a linear technical logic of computers and do not consider ethical or more complex social issues in their daily activity. This discovery supports our claim that it is of paramount importance to separate terms of digitization, meaning a technical view of the issue, and digitalization, implying a cross-field approach including both social and technical sciences. Keywords: digitalization, digital society, sociological turn, technology, social digitalization

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Today ethics is embodied not only in day-to-day life, but also in the communication that surrounds it. The study of communication in professional communities makes it possible to determine the relationship between declared and practically embodied values in work. Ethical attitudes are not only postulates embedded in ethical codes, but also principles of interaction embodied in the construction of the information space and decision-making. Features of modern communications influence the way professional ethics is structured, which, in turn, affects its content and practical implementation. The communication through the Internet makes scientific work performative, filling it with symbols and labels. Increasingly, communication practices have to be carried out around indicators, and thus communication becomes a conductor of neoliberal reforms in scientific work. Therefore, the consequence of modern forms of communication is the forced utilitarianism of ethics associated with the need to compete in the “scientific market”. The article suggests possible ways to overcome the contradictions of communicative transformations of professional values.