After gaining independence, Ukraine embarked on the path of building a
democratic, legal state. One of the conditions for the formation of such a state, its social
basis, is a civil society, in which, through a system of social institutions and social
relations, the necessary conditions are created for each citizen to realize his potential,
personal rights and freedoms are ensured, in particular the right to information, as a basic
element of modern information society.
However, the events of 2022, namely, Russia's military invasion of Ukraine, created
extraordinary conditions for the formation of society's information community. On the one
hand, it is connected with the so-called "information front", and on the other, with the
information sovereignty of the state, which will naturally be under unprecedented
influence.
It is obvious that both of these aspects need protective tools so that every society
can be called civil in all its manifestations. In modern scientific thought, a lot of attention
is paid to the analysis of the conditions for the formation of civil society, the factors that
speed up or, on the contrary, slow down this process. Freedom of information can be
called one of the essential qualities of civil society and at the same time one of the
important conditions for its formation. Ensuring in the state the right to receive,
disseminate, use information, cancel/restrict censorship, the maximum possible
informational openness of state authorities - all this is the most important guarantor of the
formation of a modern civil society. At the same time, the conditions of martial law clearly
require certain restrictions on freedom of information in order to preserve human lives.
So, the concept of "information society" can be singled out to describe the
conditions for the formation of modern civil society, its development both in peacetime
and in the conditions of an open military conflict, which is the largest in the modern
history of Europe.
At the same time, there is no unified understanding of the defined category in
modern legal science, the relationship between the categories information society and civil
society has not been established, the role and significance of freedom of information for
the development of civil society in peacetime, hybrid war, and martial law needs to be
clarified. The mechanism of guaranteeing the informational rights and freedoms of a
person has not yet been properly defined at the legal level, and research on the theory of
the information society in a scientific-dissertation way remains insufficient, especially in
the conditions of modern war in the XXI century. All of the above determines the
relevance of the selected research as such, which can form the basis of a modern scientific
legal school of the information society and information law.
The scientific and methodological foundation of the research was formed on the
basis of scientific developments and publications of such well-known scientists as
S. Alekseev, L. Beley, D. Bell, V. Bryzhko, V. Hapotii, O. Denisova, K. Ismailov,
A. Marushchak, M. Kornienko, S. Kuznichenko, A. Pysmenitskyi, V. Romaschenko,
N. Savinova, O. Skakun, S. Slyvka, M. Tsvik, V. Tsymbalyuk and other scientists whose
works directly related to certain issues related to the formation of civil society, information
sovereignty and, in particular, in the areas related to information rights and freedoms, their
consolidation and provision.
The purpose of the dissertation is to reveal the administrative and legal foundations
of the content, nature and specifics of the legal regulation of the information society in
Ukraine, which necessitated the solution of the following problems:
- analyze scientific concepts regarding the understanding of the information society;
- to investigate the historical, structural and legal peculiarities of the understanding
of the concept of information society in the conditions of war;
- to reveal the level of research in the jurisprudence of freedom of information in the
information and civil society;
- to reveal and substantiate the place and role of freedom of information in the
structure of the modern civil information society and in the conditions of war;
- to determine the features of the current state and the directions of functioning of
the information society on the territory of Ukraine in the conditions of war;
- to analyze the fundamental regulatory and legal acts of Ukraine in the field of
ensuring the development of the information society;
- to establish international experience in the formation of administrative and legal
foundations for the development of the information society and the possibility of
introducing European standards into the legal foundations of the information society in
Ukraine;
