Problems and prospects of the Russian information society

The information society, to which we have aspired and which we have been building, while being facilitative of extensive technological and economic growth, is also known to entail some social costs, like information inequality, information/psychological warfare, and information deprivation, which are causing declines in people's standard and quality of living, stimulating a social phenomenon such as poverty. The purpose of this empirical study is to explore the key features of poverty in the nation and the nation's administration potential for minimizing and preventing undesirable impacts from social transformations during the making of the information-type society. The study's empirical basis is grounded in the findings from a sociological study on one of the nation's northern regions, which involved interviews with at-risk (disadvantaged) families. The study's practical part includes a secondary analysis of data, based on comparing the findings from a body of fundamental sociological research on the issue. The study has helped identify a set of risk factors linked to social inequality and the formation of the culture and worldview of disadvantagedness by reference to the social and economic characteristics of a specific northern region.