1. CAN YOU DIGIT? DIGITAL
SOCIOLOGY’S VOCATIONAL
PROMISE
Stephen Barnard
St. Lawrence University
@socsavvy

2. Guiding Insights
 “In the final analysis, the
problems that we
identify and resolve
through technological
innovation will always
be essentially human
concerns which
engender
characteristically human
solutions. Much the
same can be said for the
practice of sociology.”
-Adrian Athique 2013: 263
Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence UniversityImage Credit
 “media do not simply add
a new element to the
story, they transform it”
-Livingstone 2009:8)

3. Goals of the paper…
 To make the case for a more digitally-attuned
sociology, and to forge a path in that direction.
 Here’s how:
1. I begin with a brief history of digital sociology—in the U.S.
and beyond—as well as a survey of other, related
approaches that have gained greater traction in the
field.”
2. I examine the state of social life in the digitally networked
era and make the case for sociology’s need to update its
epistemological orientation to put an end to fetishisms of
technology and the “real world.
3. I outline an agenda for the future of digital sociology
along with some suggestions for how it might be
accomplished.
Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence University

4. When I started grad school, I
dreamt of a true commitment to
(Digital) Media Sociology…
Part my concern was with
traditional media
And the other part was with
citizenship and digital media
Image: Associated Press Image: Associated Press
Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence University

5. By time I left grad school,
networked classrooms looked
like this
Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence University
Image credit: Chris Corwin

6. On the wrong side of our own
‘digital divide’
Digital Humanities has really
taken off…
While the potential for sociology
is still right at our fingertips…
Image credit
Image credit
Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence University

7. “Digital Humanities” has
really taken off
Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence University
Figure 1: Google Ngram of book references to “digital humanities”

8. Digital Sociology is behind,
but showing promise
 Especially in the U.S.
 Only 2 references to “digital sociology” in the Social Science
Citation Index
 Still, there is a lot of good, digitally-attuned sociology
 digital inequality and literacy
 (Hargittai, 2010; Hughey and Daniels, 2013; Schradie 2011),
 digital culture and interaction
 (Boyd, 2014; Marwick, 2012;Trottier 2013, Papacharissi 2010),
 networked society and social movements
 (Castells, 2013; Rainie andWellman, 2012; Earl and Kimport, 2011),
 medical sociology and the quantified self (Lupton, 2014),
 political sociology (Kriess, 2014),
 media sociology, etc.
 (Benson et al., 2012; Gillespie et al., 2014; Waisbord 2014)
Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence University

9. Lessons from the Digital
Humanities
 DH is inclusive and interdisciplinary
 Still, dialectics of inclusion and exclusion exist
 …and they are destructive and distracting
 Beware of buzzwords, determinism, and
fetishism
 DH is primarily a methodological intervention
 But, digital interventions have also opened up
entire new issues for the humanities, as they
have for sociology
Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence University

10. Two types of Digitality for
Sociology
Digital Scholarship Scholarship of the Digital
 scholarly work that leverages
digital tools in the process of
academic inquiry.
 data collection
 content from social media platforms or
other web sites
 online surveys
 other forms of digital data, however
“big”
 methods
 social network analysis
 digital ethnography
 collaborative coding
 publication outlets
 blogs
 social media platforms
 paper sharing sites
 open-access publications
 the explicit consideration
and analysis of issues
arising from the
proliferation of digital
technologies.
 In and around sociology,
there is work on internet
studies, digital inequality,
augmented reality, media
logic, and
mediation/mediatization,
among many others
Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence University

11. The Reality of Digitality
 We live in a Networked
Society
 Castells 2009; Rainie
andWellman 2012
 Social relations are
“augmented” by
technology usage
 Jurgenson 2012;
Coleman 2011
Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence University

12. A Tale of Two Fetishisms
Technology Fetishism Fetishism of the “Real Life”
 Fetishism
 “the habit humans have of
endowing real or imagined objects
or entities with self-contained,
mysterious, and even magical
powers to move and shape the
world in distinctive ways” (Harvey,
2003)
 Characteristics:
 Utopian celebration;Technological
determinism; ignorant of political-
economy
 Sites of struggle
 Big Data
 It’s great, but relying on pre-
selected, structured data has costs
 Jurgenson’s Lexicon and the
“IRL fetish”
 resists changes in culture and
technology by fetishizing that
which is the apparent antithesis of
technology, human sociality, and
by constructing a dualistic view of
reality, digital versus physical
(Jurgenson 2012)
 Characteristics:
 Utopian celebration of f2f;Vintage
nostalgia; separation fallacy;
 Sites of Struggle
 Digital Dualism vs. Augmented
Reality
 Atoms and Bits
Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence University

13. Waking up to the Digital
World
DS is more than just
“Add digital data and stir”
It will take shifts in ontology and
epistemology, theory and method,
research questions and data
collection, etc.
 If we are not of and with
members of society, then
we can hardly expect to
characterize them fairly or
accurately in our research
(Gans, 2014; cf. Barnard
andVan Gerven, 2009)
Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence UniversityImage Credit

14. Four issues DS must address
1) Update our analytical orientation
 Ontologies, epistemologies, methodologies
 Better account for the networked world
2) Keep structure and agency in balance
 Resist deterministic and fetishistic frames
 Leveraged affordances (Earl and Kimport, 2012) and mutual shaping
(Trottier 2013) are steps in the right direction
3) Preserve meaning and thick description in the age of big data
 Strive to maintain context; don’t forget the hard, interpretive work
 Consider observational biases, interests and power relations
4) Broaden our definitions…of teaching, scholarship, service, and
even sociology
 We live in a complex, hybrid world
 Our practices should be more…practical
Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence University

15. In every great challenge
lies great opportunity
 The hybridity of fields and practices in the networked era
presents a valuable opportunity to reevaluate sociology’s
vocational promise.
 While sociology has historically been attuned to viewing the
world as a commingling of agents and interactions with/in
institutional contexts, it is also possible for sociological
approaches to recognize the emergence of a digital,
hypermediated superstructure that augments traditional social
relations.
 Just as actors in other fields have developed networked practices and
dispositions to suit changes to the media environment (Barnard
forthcoming; Papacharissi and Easton 2013), sociologists can (and
should) adapt to living and researching in a networked society.
 A critical mass of society’s members (including many sociologists)
belong to the networked public. We should listen to the members and
start giving digital developments the attention they deserve.
Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence University

16. Closing remarks: we must
attend to the digital world
After all, other disciplines are
like
While a majority of sociologists still
have our heads buried in the sand
Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence University
Image credit
Image credit

17. Stephen Barnard | @socsavvy | St. Lawrence University
THANK YOU…
I look forward to comments
and questions