Towards the problem of the definiton “information and communication environment”

Information and communication environment is one of the common, often used terms in modern scientific and social discourse. However, using of this term is connected with certain terminological problems, such as its polysemy (information reality, information and communication field, virtual reality) and incompleteness of the existing definitions of this term. Having analyzed the existing definitions of this term information and communication environment in the dictionaries as well as in several studies, and basing on the definition of the term environment the author suggests her own definition of this term. In this article the information and communication environment is considered to be a synthesis of online and offline environments. The base (foundation) matter is information. The Internet is the amount of conditions. Social environment determine the social and cultural conditions are the subjects of information and communication environment - humans and non-humans. Co-existence of the subjects of human and non-human nature in the information and communication environment is, according to the author, the main and specific characteristic of information and communication environment. Author believes that’s very important to work out a common and specific definition, which will reflect all the aspects of this phenomena as soon as the information and communication environment undoubtly changes the existing social and cultural institutions and practices.