Development of Methods for Studying the Image of Culture in the Digital Era

There are a wide range of characteristics of cultural development in the digital age. One of the main features among them is the impact of modern information and communication technologies on the development of culture, which causes the new meanings and images of culture. These phenomena appear both in a real, traditional incarnation, and in a new - digital one. Moreover, both of these images are interconnected and often they are two sides of a cultural picture, process or phenomenon. The widespread use of information and communication technologies in the cultural sphere allows a person to realize his cultural potential. As a result, the cultural space is gradually saturated with works and objects of digital culture, digital art. And such objects no longer have analogues in the real world. They act as independent cultural phenomena and dominants, generating new cultural meanings. Therefore, an effective and comprehensive study of cultural images is possible only via new methods which are based on the information and communication technologies application, i. e. methods of Digital Humanities. Several new approaches to the study of culture are offered in the paper. They allow us to study the modern pervasive social and cultural space more effectively. These methods and approaches are used both in the scholarly research conducted by the authors and are effectively used for the study of culture by students of the St. Petersburg State University.