Neil Selwyn - What Is Digital Sociology?

Elisabeth S. Clemens, What is Political Sociology?

Hank Johnston, What is a Social Movement?

Neil Selwyn, What is Digital Sociology?

Richard Lachmann, What is Historical Sociology?

Neil Selwyn

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Copyright Neil Selwyn 2019

The right of Neil Selwyn to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2019 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2710-6

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2711-3 (pb)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Selwyn, Neil, author.

Title: What is digital sociology? / Neil Selwyn.

Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018025187 (print) | LCCN 2018027027 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509527144 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509527106 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509527113 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Sociology. | Information technologySocial aspects.

Classification: LCC HM585 (ebook) | LCC HM585 .S458 2018 (print) | DDC 301dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018025187

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A print-based publication might seem a rather old-fashioned means of addressing the question of digital sociology. Indeed, tackling any question these days is increasingly unlikely to involve consulting a book. Instead most people's immediate approach to making sense of the question What is Digital Sociology? is likely to involve turning to Google (or perhaps Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo and other alternative search engines). Some individuals looking for a deeper dive might check Wikipedia or perhaps search a bibliographic database for a couple of algorithmically recommended articles. In contrast, sitting down and methodically working your way through a 40,000-word book might appear a rather long-winded way of going about things.

This abundance of online information reflects the fast-changing nature of scholarship and knowledge. It also flags up the need for sociologists to pay serious attention to the digital. Google, Wikipedia and similar information sources are not simply washing over academic disciplines such as sociology and leaving things unchanged. Instead, these technologies are significantly influencing the ways that knowledge is being developed and disseminated. As such, they are technologies that sociologists need not only to be making clever use of but also developing critical stances toward.

). Among other things, Lupton's book developed a great framework for making sense of digital sociology in terms of digital theory-building, digital methods and digital scholarship. Extending these themes, Marres provided a thorough grounding in the ontological and epistemological challenges thrown up by digital methods of social inquiry and analysis. These four books continue to be must-read references for anyone looking to venture into this area.

). There are a number of themes and principles underpinning our discussions. On the one hand is an awareness of what is taking place outside of sociology. It is important to remember that recent developments in digital sociology have not occurred in a vacuum. In this sense, care needs be taken in locating these ideas in relation to developments beyond the discipline. Indeed, one of the challenges when attempting to talk about digital sociology is the increasingly blurred distinction between straight-ahead sociological work and the mass of cognate work taking place across the digital humanities, new media studies, communications, design and computational subjects. As will be reiterated throughout this book, digital sociology is an inherently interdisciplinary endeavor that spans many different disciplinary boundaries.

On the other hand is the need to remember that this remains a book specifically about sociology. While reflecting on inter/intra-disciplinary cross-overs, we must not forget to emphasize what is inherently sociological about our interests. After all, this is a book concerned with digital sociology rather than digital social sciences or critical digital studies. As such, it takes care to locate current concerns over digital sociology in relation to the bigger picture of sociology. One feature of this approach is a willingness to move on quickly from the surface-level features and novelties of the digital. If we are not careful, discussions of digital sociology can soon get bogged down in excessively descriptive and sometimes exoticized stories of how individuals now encounter and experience the digital. Examining the lived experiences of digitally mediated society is important but must be appropriately grounded in what might appear to be relatively dry issues of social structure, political economy, power relations, and so on. Thus while this book considers a range of current hot topics within digital culture and digital life, it does so within appropriately micro and macro levels of analysis.

If nothing else, this hopefully gives the book a longer shelf life than many other discussions of digital society. Rather than over-focusing on specific instances of how the digital is currently being experienced, this text is concerned primarily with enduring ideas and issues. The arguments, issues and ideas outlined here should remain relevant long after Twitter, Facebook, Mechanical Turk, and so on, have fallen out of fashion. Indeed, there is clear benefit to retaining a strong sense of history when talking about digital society to remain mindful of where our current concerns sit within the history of sociological thought. In this sense, previous discussions of digital sociology have sometimes suffered from not being sufficiently grounded in the discipline's pre-digital work on technology. This book therefore takes care to foreground connections with nineteenth- and twentieth-century sociology both as a rejoinder to ahistorical accounts of digital sociology and as a means of highlighting the strong connections with long-running concerns in mainstream sociology.

's indicative discussions of digital race and digital labor are intended to inspire readers to delve into