Digital Sociology Critical Perspectives

New digital technologies have fostered much debate about the nature of social relationships, institutions and structures in a new information age. An amorphous and interdisciplinary field of research has emerged, concerning itself with the complexities and contradictions involved in the fundamental shifts and radical transformations which information and communication technologies (ICTs) are purportedly bringing about across cultural, political and economic practices. From cyberselves to cyber communities, from media wars to the digital divide, sociology confronts a new digital landscape. This text takes stock of how the discipline has addressed the challenge of the digital providing a uniquely sociological framework with which to critically re-evaluate fundamental social concerns: from digital intimacies and online relationships to new forms of mediated inequality and network structures, from digitally mediated media practices to education and health 2.0, this text provides a comprehensive introduction to the transformations wrought by digital technologies to contemporary societies and a critical reflection on how the digital is reconfiguring the tools, concepts and precepts of the discipline.

NICK PRIOR is a senior lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, UK   KATE ORTON-JOHNSON is a lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, UK

Introduction; K.Orton-Johnson & N.Prior

PART I: RELATIONSHIPS
Personal Relationships, Intimacy and the Self in a Mediated and Global Digital Age; L.Jamieson
'Gendering the Digital': The Impact of Gender and Technology Perspectives on the Sociological Imagination; E.Green & C.Singleton
Digital Relationships and Feminist Hope; D.Ferreday
PART II: SPACES
Rethinking Space: Urban Informatics and the Sociological Imagination; R.Burrows & D.Beer
Rethinking Community in the Digital Age?; K.Evans
Digital Spaces, Sociology and Surveillance; D.Lyon
PART III: STRUCTURES
Inequalities in the Network Society; J.Van Dijk
Trillions Out of Ones and Zeros: The Sociology of Finance Encounters the Digital Age; J.Pardo-Guerra
PART IV: MEDIATIONS
War Reporting in a Digital Age; S.Allan & D.Matheson
Imagining Networks: The Sociology of Connection in the Digital Age; A.Cavanagh
Mediating the Digital?; N.Prior & K.Orton-Johnson
PART V: PRACTICES
Rethinking Education in the Digital Age; N.Selwyn
E-Health and Renewed Sociological Approaches to Health and Illness; J.Kivits
Digital Technology and Sociological Windows; A.Webster

Index