Digital Sociology
We live in an increasingly digitized world. Almost all social actions are being mediated and shaped by digital devices such as sensors and smartphones, apps, and platforms, among many others. And with this, massive digital traces are continually generated, allowing new ways of inquiring into social life and doing sociological research. At the same time, digital technologies reproduce and create new digital divides, forms of oppression, and social inequalities that present important challenges for contemporary sociology.
The Thematic Group 10 on Digital Sociology of the International Sociological Association (ISA) was established in 2020 aiming to encourage research of high quality on the intersection between Digital Technologies and Society.
The main goals we pursue are:
- To establish a network of sociologists working in ‘the digital’ in order to advance the theoretical, empirical, methodological, and socioethical knowledge produced in the field.
- To allow fruitful interactions across various ISA groups that are working on connected issues.
- To provide an alternative to other existing organizations dealing with Digital Issues, focused on issues, perspectives, and approaches that are of interest of the sociological community, acting as an international home for scholars in various stages of their academic career in this field. Also, create synergies with local, national, or regional research organizations dealing with similar issues, with the aim to disseminate contents and knowledge of common interest and to share activities.
- To attract new scholars to TG10 sessions at ISA conferences and foster research in the realm of Digital Sociology as a central issue in current research trends.
- To create new opportunities for meeting, publishing, mentoring students, and sharing information.
First WG10 Midterm Conference on Digital Sociology
The University of Warsaw hosted the first conference on Digital Sociology of the WG10, in coordination with the Instytut Studiów Społecznych, Civil City Lab and DELab UW. more than 60 participants from around the globe gathered in Warsaw (Poland) and joined a great conference where methods and theories were discussed in a very creative and engaging mood.
See a video summarizing the conference here.
Promoted to a Working Group!
The TG10 Digital Sociology has already become a WG10 Digital Sociology. The fast growth of our group allowed us to promote in the organization at ISA and we will from now on be considered a Working Group, involving larger space in the conference but also more capacity to organize and deal with resources!
#MakingDigitalSociology
A great success!
Very proud of the work we did at the Thematic Group on Digital Sociology at the World Congress of Sociology of the International Sociological Association. Hard to put all the emotions and good news in a single message, but let's try:
- We had the chance to organize, for the first time, our own sessions with great success: rooms packed in every session, interesting debates, and further connections.
- We had an important number of joint sessions with other RCs making clear the transversality of our research topic and building a future network of collaboration with other colleagues.
- We had the privilege to host the keynote speech by Ori Schwartz, discussing the challenges that digitalization poses to sociological theory (see more in his book: Sociological Theory for Digital Society: The Codes that Bind Us Together)
- We have been invited to promote to a Working Group by the ISA, a great success resulting from the fact that we grew up to more than 130 members even before starting our first-ever session in a conference, proving the timeliness of our research topic
- And, most importantly, we keep creating a very promising community of researchers that will have important words to say in the near future!
Thanks all for your work and great presentations! Special thanks to Regev Nathansohn, PhD, Attila Márton for their organization of the sessions; Karolina Mikołajewska-Zając, for her amazing work in social media; Esther Brainin for her great work as vice-president; all those who helped to chair sessions (Izumi Tsuji, Samuel Cabbuag, Lauren Waardenburg,...); and all those who presented and attended our sessions: IT HAS BEEN A GREAT EXPERIENCE!
If you want to know more (future activities, workshops, conferences), follow our group on LinkedIn (https://lnkd.in/e-iYNWqh), or on Twitter (https://lnkd.in/ddBPWdat), our website (https://lnkd.in/enW5ktxV) or join us at ISA (https://lnkd.in/dDe6FqkK)
First participation of our Thematic Group in the World Congress of Sociology!
Today we are privileged to have the first sessions of our Thematic Group in Digital Sociology (TG10) at the World Congress of the International Sociological Association (ISA) in Melbourne #ISAWCS23. See our sessions at: https://lnkd.in/d2CMgEtZ
This official kick-off is the result of many hours, meetings, and discussions to shed light on digital-related sociological content. In light of the wonderful increase of members in our group, its global diversity, and the growing interest in our research topics, we are pretty confident that we will have a great future.
Come and join us! More information at: https://lnkd.in/enW5ktxV