Digital Sociology

SOS134 will provide students with an introduction to core concepts, debates on and methods to investigate the digitalization of society - understood as processes through which domains of social life are restructured around digital communication and media infrastructures. Many areas of social life have been and continue to be impacted by digital technologies - from global trade (e.g., 'the Big Bang') to social protest (e.g., #BLM, #MeToo), to intimate relationships (e.g., dating apps), to political communication and public health (e.g. 'filter bubbles', polarization and conspiracy theories). But human use of these technologies - their commercial, military and surveillance applications for example, and the cultural, social and political domains in which they become entangled - also shape their development. The course seeks to understand these interactions, and their implications for social practice, society, human and ecological relationships, and for sociological theory. It will do so primarily through the investigation of digitalization in selected social domains, and by introducing students to digital methods of investigation. These domains will initially comprise - gender and intimate relationships; global capitalism and the environment; diaspora communities; social protest and activism; and political and scientific communication - but the list may change from year to year.

10 ECTS

Bachelor

The course can be offered both spring and autumn, but the offer will vary from semester to semester. In 2026 it will run in the spring.