SAMENVATTING DIGITAL MEDIA SOCIOLOGY 2024-2025
LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION
- What did you do the past hour: check socials, show pictures, check location of lecture,…
➔ This course: this was not always the case
- Picture ‘the matrix’ → popular movie → the way
they visualized fights etc. AND movie fitted good in
frame of the millennials about what the internet
would do to us → ‘is life on the internet real?’
→ Now also with AI and its generated
video’s/pictures/… → ‘is this real?’
Picture of the professor when she was in her 20s → didn’t have a phone, new technologies entered the
world → all questions that we won’t have to ask ourselves
➔ Now reality has changed: it has changed every aspect of our daily lives (how we work, how we
meet, how relationships go,…)
TAKEN-FOR-GRANTEDNESS – RICH LING 2012
= this is what it means when we believe some there are things we ca always count on such as always
contacting family and friends, always checking our socials,…
SOCIOLOGY
Sociology studies the social organization of society
- How do people live together?
- What opportunities and problems arise from this?
Questions revolve mainly around:
1) Social order (and social cohesion) = the rules that govern how we do things vb.: particular
ways of education, being on time,…
2) Leads to social Inequality, in a material and symbolic sense = POWER → privileges that
come with a certain social order
3) Identity, as a group and as individual = how do we give meaning to life
→ Psychology: Individual cognition, emotion, behavior
,A DIGITAL MEDIA SOCIETY
How do digital media…
… are implicated in ‘the way we do things’ (social order)?
… disrupt or reproduce power? (social inequality)?
… shape the meaning of things (identity)?
- Micro-level: Changes in our everyday practices
- Macro-level: Changes to our societal institutions
MEDIA SOCIOLOGY VS. MEDIA PSYCHOLOGY
- media sociology studies how media affect the social organization of society
- media psychology how media affect individual cognition, emotion and behavior
- media studies study the media industry and how it delivers messages to audiences
Example: what are reasons that explain how tv viewing lead to child obesity epidemic?
- Sociology: woman entered the working floor → kinds home alone → they eat more sweets and
watch more tv
- Media Psychology: tv makes children addictive because of the design of tv programs
Communication Science is inherently inter-disciplinary
Example micro-level: food ordering on digital platforms → what could sociological question be?
- We could look at the group of people who do delivery and how their everyday live looks like
- Ask how family dynamics changes when they order take-out → does it decrease family
communication?
- Questions about how people cook less that they did before
Example macro-level: food ordering on digital platforms → what could sociological question be?
- Workers have work circumstances that are not always great → look at two pictures: one is an
advertisement and the other just a picture
➔ First picture looks very positive but in reality not the same
SOCIAL STRUCTURE & SOCIAL POSITIONS AND SOCIAL ROLES
Social structure = the organized patterns of relationships rules and ‘rule arrangements’ that govern how
people interact and live together
➔ ! Organized ≠ ‘formal’
, - Arrangements of rules into established systems → social institutions
- Arrangements of relationships/interactions → social positions
Example food delivery culture:
- This economy works by its own rules → some of those rules are explicit, not all implicit
Example: food-drivers who are ‘self-employed’ → in reality not so well protected and only few
rights
- Platform Economy as an emerging social institution:
o Social Position: self-employed or employee?
o Social identity: Brand ambassadors or algorithmic slaves?
People have specific social positions (parent-child-teacher) In different social institutions (example:
school) → bound together by rule arrangement (rules different for parent than child)
SOCIAL STRUCTURE & CULTURE
Culture = a shared set of beliefs, norms, behaviors, values, symbols, rituals, attitudes, …
Culture and social structure are linked:
➔ values and beliefs are forces that shape social order
➔ norms are expectations of how one should behave
➔ patterns of behavior normatively expected for certain social positions are social roles
➔ rituals are habitualized behaviors and objects that are symbolic/carry meaning (and thus value)
COURSE INFORMATION → ZIE POWERPOINT
SOCIAL STRUCTURE: WHY DO WE DO THE THINGS WE DO?
DOING THINGS A CERTAIN WAY: SOCIAL STRUCTURE AS A SET OF ‘LOGICS’
= Our everyday practices, i.e., the ways in which we typically ‘do things’, reflect the relationship between
individuals and the social order.
Example: traffic lights (red-orange-green) → we follow these rules
- Social order concerns the ‘rules’ that order society
- individuals, through their practices, obey or disobey these rules, thus reproducing the
social order or challenging it
- practices are thus inherently relational (= social), persistent/durable (= historical), and
cultural (= contextual)
, Practices that we all engage in are the practices that remain us to the social order
Example: every time we stop in front of red light → we acknowledge this social structure
➔ Not something bad: we need rules → without rules the world would be total chaos
- Social structures are often taken-for-granted → we need to look what impact these have on our
daily live
- Social change occurs when individuals
successfully and collectively produce a
new social order
! We can actually change the social structure if
enough people consistently for a long duration of
time start following new rules
Example: olifantenpaadje: although the social
structure is very clear you see that people don’t
follow the rules → they take the shortcut → and so
a new path forms ‘the elephant trail’
GIDDENS’ STRUCTURATION THEORY (1984)
Duality of structure: structure and agency as mutually constitutive
Social structures: enable and constrain human action (provides rules and resources for meaningful
action)
Agency: Individuals produce and reproduce social structure.
They are knowledgeable, rational actors with:
1) the capacity for ‘reflexivity’: a capacity to reflect on the social structure and their role as
reproducing agent in it, and
2) the capacity to act ‘intentionally rational’ : to modify their behavior in line with certain goals that
they can reasonably justify as being worthy of pursuit.
Social structure doesn’t exist without agency and the other way around!
- Solved the conundrum
- Some theories where very deterministic and other theories were very voluntary
- Giddens = realist (measurable)
- Giddenses = people who keep social structure alive, who make this social structure
→people have the capacity to reflect (are knowledgeable and rational) on the world and make
actions to steer their behavior to do things that are rationally worth it
LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION
- What did you do the past hour: check socials, show pictures, check location of lecture,…
➔ This course: this was not always the case
- Picture ‘the matrix’ → popular movie → the way
they visualized fights etc. AND movie fitted good in
frame of the millennials about what the internet
would do to us → ‘is life on the internet real?’
→ Now also with AI and its generated
video’s/pictures/… → ‘is this real?’
Picture of the professor when she was in her 20s → didn’t have a phone, new technologies entered the
world → all questions that we won’t have to ask ourselves
➔ Now reality has changed: it has changed every aspect of our daily lives (how we work, how we
meet, how relationships go,…)
TAKEN-FOR-GRANTEDNESS – RICH LING 2012
= this is what it means when we believe some there are things we ca always count on such as always
contacting family and friends, always checking our socials,…
SOCIOLOGY
Sociology studies the social organization of society
- How do people live together?
- What opportunities and problems arise from this?
Questions revolve mainly around:
1) Social order (and social cohesion) = the rules that govern how we do things vb.: particular
ways of education, being on time,…
2) Leads to social Inequality, in a material and symbolic sense = POWER → privileges that
come with a certain social order
3) Identity, as a group and as individual = how do we give meaning to life
→ Psychology: Individual cognition, emotion, behavior
,A DIGITAL MEDIA SOCIETY
How do digital media…
… are implicated in ‘the way we do things’ (social order)?
… disrupt or reproduce power? (social inequality)?
… shape the meaning of things (identity)?
- Micro-level: Changes in our everyday practices
- Macro-level: Changes to our societal institutions
MEDIA SOCIOLOGY VS. MEDIA PSYCHOLOGY
- media sociology studies how media affect the social organization of society
- media psychology how media affect individual cognition, emotion and behavior
- media studies study the media industry and how it delivers messages to audiences
Example: what are reasons that explain how tv viewing lead to child obesity epidemic?
- Sociology: woman entered the working floor → kinds home alone → they eat more sweets and
watch more tv
- Media Psychology: tv makes children addictive because of the design of tv programs
Communication Science is inherently inter-disciplinary
Example micro-level: food ordering on digital platforms → what could sociological question be?
- We could look at the group of people who do delivery and how their everyday live looks like
- Ask how family dynamics changes when they order take-out → does it decrease family
communication?
- Questions about how people cook less that they did before
Example macro-level: food ordering on digital platforms → what could sociological question be?
- Workers have work circumstances that are not always great → look at two pictures: one is an
advertisement and the other just a picture
➔ First picture looks very positive but in reality not the same
SOCIAL STRUCTURE & SOCIAL POSITIONS AND SOCIAL ROLES
Social structure = the organized patterns of relationships rules and ‘rule arrangements’ that govern how
people interact and live together
➔ ! Organized ≠ ‘formal’
, - Arrangements of rules into established systems → social institutions
- Arrangements of relationships/interactions → social positions
Example food delivery culture:
- This economy works by its own rules → some of those rules are explicit, not all implicit
Example: food-drivers who are ‘self-employed’ → in reality not so well protected and only few
rights
- Platform Economy as an emerging social institution:
o Social Position: self-employed or employee?
o Social identity: Brand ambassadors or algorithmic slaves?
People have specific social positions (parent-child-teacher) In different social institutions (example:
school) → bound together by rule arrangement (rules different for parent than child)
SOCIAL STRUCTURE & CULTURE
Culture = a shared set of beliefs, norms, behaviors, values, symbols, rituals, attitudes, …
Culture and social structure are linked:
➔ values and beliefs are forces that shape social order
➔ norms are expectations of how one should behave
➔ patterns of behavior normatively expected for certain social positions are social roles
➔ rituals are habitualized behaviors and objects that are symbolic/carry meaning (and thus value)
COURSE INFORMATION → ZIE POWERPOINT
SOCIAL STRUCTURE: WHY DO WE DO THE THINGS WE DO?
DOING THINGS A CERTAIN WAY: SOCIAL STRUCTURE AS A SET OF ‘LOGICS’
= Our everyday practices, i.e., the ways in which we typically ‘do things’, reflect the relationship between
individuals and the social order.
Example: traffic lights (red-orange-green) → we follow these rules
- Social order concerns the ‘rules’ that order society
- individuals, through their practices, obey or disobey these rules, thus reproducing the
social order or challenging it
- practices are thus inherently relational (= social), persistent/durable (= historical), and
cultural (= contextual)
, Practices that we all engage in are the practices that remain us to the social order
Example: every time we stop in front of red light → we acknowledge this social structure
➔ Not something bad: we need rules → without rules the world would be total chaos
- Social structures are often taken-for-granted → we need to look what impact these have on our
daily live
- Social change occurs when individuals
successfully and collectively produce a
new social order
! We can actually change the social structure if
enough people consistently for a long duration of
time start following new rules
Example: olifantenpaadje: although the social
structure is very clear you see that people don’t
follow the rules → they take the shortcut → and so
a new path forms ‘the elephant trail’
GIDDENS’ STRUCTURATION THEORY (1984)
Duality of structure: structure and agency as mutually constitutive
Social structures: enable and constrain human action (provides rules and resources for meaningful
action)
Agency: Individuals produce and reproduce social structure.
They are knowledgeable, rational actors with:
1) the capacity for ‘reflexivity’: a capacity to reflect on the social structure and their role as
reproducing agent in it, and
2) the capacity to act ‘intentionally rational’ : to modify their behavior in line with certain goals that
they can reasonably justify as being worthy of pursuit.
Social structure doesn’t exist without agency and the other way around!
- Solved the conundrum
- Some theories where very deterministic and other theories were very voluntary
- Giddens = realist (measurable)
- Giddenses = people who keep social structure alive, who make this social structure
→people have the capacity to reflect (are knowledgeable and rational) on the world and make
actions to steer their behavior to do things that are rationally worth it
