DIGITAL SOCIOLOGY:BEYOND THE DIGITAL TO THE SOCIOLOGICAL

Deborah LuptonDepartment of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney

Twitter: @DALupton

Blog: This Sociological Life

@DALupton

Before digital sociology …• Cybersociology• E-sociology• Sociology of cyberspace• Sociology of ICTs• Sociology of online communities• Internet studies• New media studies• Sociology of the internet

Digital sociology is all this and more!

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Why ‘digital sociology’?

• Acknowledges recent focus away from ‘the cyber’ to ‘the digital’

• Responds to terminology of other sub-disciplines: digital humanities, digital anthropology, digital cultures, digital geography

• Incorporates all things digital

• Signals focus on ‘Web 2.0’ and ‘Web 3.0’ technologies

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Beyond the digital to the sociological…

• Life is digital → social life is digital → ‘the social’ is digital

• Digital use/non-use involves all the usual suspects: gender, age, class, income, education, race/ethnicity, culture, geographical location

• Digital tech now imbricated into all social institutions: the economy, the mass media, the workplace, education, the family, the healthcare system

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Beyond the digital to the sociological• Digital tech contribute to concepts of selfhood, identity and

embodiment

• Digital tech involved in new forms of power relations

• Digital tech offer new and inventive ways of practising and teaching sociology and disseminating research

• Academics are now ‘digitised’, whether we like it or not!

We now cannot practice as sociologists without using, theorising and researching digital technologies

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@DALupton

The four dimensions of digital sociology

• Professional digital practice: using digital media tools for sociological work

• Sociological analyses of digital media use: researching how and why people use digital tech

• Digital data analysis: using digital data for social research, either quantitative or qualitative; and

• Critical digital sociology: undertaking reflexive and critical analysis of digital media tech.

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Final thoughts …

• Digital sociology offers valuable insights to and on our thoroughly digitised world

• Can provide a counter-foil and complement to reductionist tendencies of big data and data science

• A critical, reflexive and complex stance on the digital is sorely needed – we can provide it

• Helps us move from ‘dead sociology’ to ‘live sociology’

@DALupton