DIGITAL SOCIOLOGY We now live in a digital society. New digital technologies have had a profound influence on everyday life, social relations, government, commerce, the economy and the production and dissemination of knowledge. People’s movements in space, their purchasing habits and their online communication with others are now monitored in detail by digital technologies. We are increasingly becoming digital data subjects, whether we like it or not, and whether we choose this or not.
The sub-discipline of digital sociology provides a means by which the impact, development and use of these technologies and their incor- poration into social worlds, social institutions and concepts of selfhood and embodiment may be investigated, analysed and understood. This book introduces a range of interesting social, cultural and political dimensions of digital society and discusses some of the important debates occurring in research and scholarship on these aspects. It covers the new knowledge economy and big data, reconceptualising research in the digital era, the digitisation of higher education, the diversity of digital use, digital politics and citizen digital engagement, the politics of surveillance, privacy issues, the contribution of digital devices to embodiment and concepts of selfhood, and many other topics. Digital Sociology is essential reading not only for students and academics in sociology, anthropology, media and communication, digital cultures, digital humanities, internet studies, science and technology studies, cultural geography and social computing, but for other readers inter- ested in the social impact of digital technologies.
Deborah Lupton is Centenary Research Professor in the News and Media Research Centre, Faculty of Arts & Design, University of Canberra. ‘Anyone with an interest in the future of sociology should read this book. In its pages Deborah Lupton provides an informative and vibrant account of a series of digital transformations and explores what these might mean for sociological work. Digital Sociology deals with the very practice and purpose of sociology.
In short, this is a road-map for a version of sociology that responds directly to a changing social world. My suspicion is that by the end of the book you will almost certainly have become a digital sociologist.’ David Beer, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of York, UK ‘This excellent book makes a compelling case for the continuing relevance of academic sociology in a world marked by “big data” and digital transformations of various sort. The book demonstrates that rather than losing jurisdiction over the study of the “social” a plethora of recent inventive conceptual, methodological and substantive developments in the discipline provide the raw material for a radical reworking of the craft of sociology. As such it deserves the widest readership possible.’ Roger Burrows, Professor in the Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK ‘With a clear and engaging style, this book explores the breadth and depth of ongoing digital transformations to data, academic practice and everyday life.
Ranging impressively across these often far too disparate fields, Lupton positions sociological thinking as key to our understanding of the digital world.’ Susan Halford, Professor of Sociology, University of Southampton, UK ‘Lupton’s compelling exploration of the centrality of the digital to everyday life reveals diversity and nuance in the ways digital technologies empower and constrain actions and citizenship. This excellent book offers researchers a rich resource to contextualize theories and practices for studying today’s society, and advances critical scholarship on digital life.’ Catherine Middleton, Canada Research Chair in Communication Technologies in the Information Society, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada DIGITAL SOCIOLOGY Deborah Lupton First published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 Deborah Lupton The right of Deborah Lupton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lupton, Deborah. Digital sociology / Deborah Lupton. pages cm ISBN 978-1-138-02276-8 (hardback)—ISBN 978-1-138-02277-5 (paperback)—ISBN 978-1-315-77688-0 (ebook) 1.
Digital media— Social aspects. Technology—Sociological aspects.23'1—dc23 2014014299 ISBN: 978-1-138-02276-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-02277-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-77688-0 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk CONTENTS 1 Introduction: life is digital 1 2 Theorising digital society 20 3 Reconceptualising research in the digital era 42 4 The digitised academic 66 5 A critical sociology of big data 93 6 The diversity of digital technology use 117 7 Digital politics and citizen digital public engagement 141 8 The digitised body/self 164 9 Conclusion 188 Discussion questions 191 Appendix: details of the ‘Academics’ Use of Social Media’ survey 192 Bibliography 194 Index 221 v This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 1 Introduction Life is digital Life is Digital: Back It Up (Headline of an online advertisement used by a company selling digital data-protection products) Let me begin with a reflection upon the many and diverse ways in which digital technologies have permeated everyday life in developed countries over the past thirty years. Many of us have come to rely upon being connected to the internet throughout our waking hours. Digital devices that can go online from almost any location have become ubiquitous.
Smartphones and tablet computers are small enough to carry with us at all times. Some devices – known as wear- able computers (‘wearables’ for short) – can even be worn upon our bodies, day and night, and monitor our bodily functions and activities. We can access our news, music, television and films via digital plat- forms and devices. Our intimate and work-related relationships and our membership of communities may be at least partly developed and maintained using social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
Our photographs and home videos are digitised and now may be displayed to the world if we so desire, using platforms such as Instagram, Flickr and YouTube. Information can easily be sought on the internet using search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing. The open-access online collaborative platform Wikipedia has become the most highly- used reference source in the world. Nearly all employment involves 1 I N T RO D UC T I O N : L I FE IS D I G I TA L some form of digital technology use (even if it is as simple as a website to promote a business or a mobile phone to communicate with work- mates or clients).
School curricula and theories of learning have increasingly been linked to digital technologies and focused on the training of students in using these technologies. Digital global posi- tioning systems give us directions and help us locate ourselves in space. In short, we now live in a digital society. While this has occurred progressively, major changes have been wrought by the introduction of devices and platforms over the past decade in particular.
Personal computers were introduced to the public in the mid-1980s.The World Wide Web was invented in 1989 but became readily accessible to the public only in 1994. From 2001, many significant platforms and devices have been released that have had a major impact on social life. Wikipedia and iTunes began operation in 2001. LinkedIn was estab- lished in 2003, Facebook in 2004, Reddit, Flickr and YouTube a year later, and Twitter in 2006.
Smartphones came on the market in 2007, the same year that Tumblr was introduced, while Spotify began in 2008. Instagram and tablet computers followed in 2010, Pinterest and Google+ in 2011. For some theorists, the very idea of ‘culture’ or ‘society’ cannot now be fully understood without the recognition that computer software and hardware devices not only underpin but actively constitute self- hood, embodiment, social life, social relations and social institutions. Anthropologists Daniel Miller and Heather Horst (2012: 4) assert that digital technologies, like other material cultural artefacts, are ‘becom- ing a constitutive part of what makes us human’.
They claim against contentions that engaging with the digital somehow makes us less human and authentic that,‘not only are we just as human in the digital world, the digital also provides many new opportunities for anthro- pology to help us understand what makes us human’. As a sociologist, I would add to this observation that just as investigating our interac- tions with digital technologies contributes to research into the nature of human experience, it also tells us much about the social world. We have reached a point where digital technologies’ ubiquity and pervasiveness are such that they have become invisible. Some people may claim that their lives have not become digitised to any significant extent: that their ways of working, socialising, moving around in space, engaging in family life or intimate relationships have changed little because they refuse to use computerised devices.
However, these indi- viduals are speaking from a position which only serves to highlight the now unobtrusive, taken-for-granted elements of digitisation. Even when people themselves eschew the use of a smartphone, digital camera or social media platform, they invariably will find themselves 2 I N T RO D UC T I O N : L I FE IS D I G I TA L interacting with those who do.They may even find that digital images or audio files of themselves will be uploaded and circulated using these technologies by others without their knowledge or consent. Our movements in public space and our routine interactions with government and commercial institutions and organisations are now mediated via digital technologies in ways of which we are not always fully aware. The way in which urban space is generated, configured, monitored and managed, for example, is a product of digital technolo- gies.
CCTV (closed-circuit television) cameras that monitor people’s movements in public space, traffic light and public transport systems, planning and development programmes for new buildings and the ordering, production and payment systems for most goods, services and public utilities are all digitised. In an era in which mobile and wearable digital devices are becoming increasingly common, the digital recording of images and audio by people interacting in private and public spaces, in conjunction with security and commercial surveillance technologies that are now part of public spaces and everyday transactions, means that we are increasingly becoming digital data subjects, whether we like it or not, and whether we choose this or not. Digitised data related to our routine interactions with networked technologies, including search engine enquiries, phone calls, shopping, government agency and banking interactions, are collected automati- cally and archived, producing massive data sets that are now often referred to as ‘big data’. Big data also include ‘user-generated content’, or information that has been intentionally uploaded to social media platforms by users as part of their participation in these sites: their tweets, status updates, blog posts and comments, photographs and videos and so on.
Social media platforms record and monitor an increasing number of features about these communicative acts: not only what is said, but the profiles of the speaker and the audience, how others reacted to the content: how many ‘likes’, comments, views, time spent on a page or ‘retweets’ were generated, the time of day interac- tion occurred, the geographical location of users, the search terms used to find the content, how content is shared across platforms and so on. There has been increasing attention paid to the value of the big data for both commercial and non-commercial enterprises.