Sociology is a very young discipline, but one that is constantly evolving and always in step with the times. It's no coincidence, then, that the almost normal consequence of social research concerns new digital fields. It's therefore no surprise that a specific type of sociology has emerged: digital sociology.
What is digital sociology?
Digital sociology seeks to study and analyze digital not simply as an object of study or a technology, but as a true field of study within which to observe and analyze changes. Consider, for example, the inequalities caused by the digital divide, social relations in online communities, and various other practices that have developed elsewhere online. While the approach to digital as a field of study entered the debate as a new methodological research approach, ultimately resulting in the development of digital methods, over time digital sociology has assumed such prominence that it has also established itself as a theoretically relevant field.
Every need to understand phenomena generates diverse approaches and interests, but digital sociology isn't simply about adding a new technical tool to our methodological toolbox, but rather about reaching the heart of contemporary sociocultural processes. Of course, using digital methods to study cultural processes certainly doesn't mean they're the only possible methods , or even superior to other approaches used in the social sciences. Indeed, it's widely believed that the digital methods of digital sociology should be triangulated, whenever possible, with traditional or virtual techniques to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of online social phenomena (Caliandro, Gandini, 2019).
The epistemological foundations of digital sociology
If we assume that life today is digital in every aspect, then sociology is readily called upon to study every new or remedied phenomenon. In other words, studying digital society means focusing on many of the aspects that have always interested sociologists. Think of the self, identity, the body, inequalities, social networks, power relations, social structures, institutions, politics, social movements, and so on.
The epistemological basis that characterizes digital sociology can be summarized in three fundamental premises:
- The need to combine a perspective that considers the media's central role in a given context with a perspective that places the social actor at the center. This is done with the aim of investigating the social relationships that the latter develops with other human and non-human subjects, such as algorithms and artificial intelligence.
- the rejection of the conceptual and epistemological separation between real and virtual, online and offline. In other words, there is no differentiation—today—between purely digital contexts and "real life" contexts because, as P. Levi reminds us, "the virtual is real."
- The rejection of a techno-deterministic perspective on digital media platforms and applications. In other words, we want to distance ourselves from the idea of technology as an all-pervasive social actor, but at the same time, we also want to distance ourselves from the idea that big data represents the overcoming of theory.
Collect digital data
To effectively conduct research in digital sociology, it must first be clear that online contexts must be perceived as highly participatory. Consider, for example, the feedback companies receive from their users on their websites through reviews, but also more simply on their social media channels.
Social media, perhaps, offers a clearer understanding of how to analyze digital social phenomena. If we start from the assumption that web players are both prosumers and producers of data and information, and if we know how to navigate them in general, we can analyze trends, movements, and developments in any type of social process.
Likes, retweets, views, and shares of content are just a few examples of digital data that, as already mentioned, fall within the scope of big data , i.e., large quantities of data and information that are used to develop analyses through dedicated algorithms and software.
There are various ways to acquire and collect digital data. Specifically, researchers can use existing databases, free online software with very simple features and graphical interfaces, scraping techniques that allow data to be collected directly from the HTML code of a web page, or API query techniques (an acronym for Application Programming Interface). Python is well-known among researchers and the most widely used software for this activity in the context of digital methods.
Research design in digital sociology
A digital research design includes several phases:
- formulation of the research question(s)
- selecting appropriate web sources to answer the research question
- selecting the appropriate keywords to answer the search query
- digital data collection
- digital data analysis and interpretation of results
It's crucial to understand the digital environment being analyzed, as it isn't neutral : it can't be thought of as a sterile environment free from intervention and manipulation. A good research question must therefore be specific, encompass concepts that can be empirically translated—and therefore transformed into concrete data collection procedures—and be compelling, i.e., produce new knowledge about social phenomena.
Data driver and theory driven
In a digital research project, the research question can be formulated using either a data-driven or a theory-driven approach . In the former case, the research begins with the way digital data is naturally organized by the technical infrastructure of the environments. An example question might be: How is it possible that hashtags related to Elodie consistently appear among TikTok's trending topics? How do Elodie's fans achieve this result? Or even: How does YouTube's algorithm select the content that appears on the home page?
In theory-driven digital research , however, the researcher begins with a theoretical problem, which they then translate into a specific research question they attempt to answer by interrogating digital data. An example might be the public dissemination of discourse on gender-based violence, and one might wonder how preponderant (and therefore central or peripheral) this topic might be within contemporary public debate.
References
Caliandro A., Gandini A., Digital methods in social research , Carocci, Rome, 2019;
Lecturer in Communications and HR Management. Journalist with a degree in Sociology (cum laude). Editor-in-Chief of Sociologicamente.it.
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