Samenvatting Digital Media Sociology UGent 2026

DIGITAL MEDIA SOCIOLOGY



1: INTRODUCTION
 Taken-for-grantedness (Rich Ling)
o = we take it for granted that technologies are here
o Only when technology breaks, we realize how dependent we are on it

Sociology:

 Studies the social organization of society
o Rules, institutions, norms
 How we live together
 Questions revolve around:
o Social order and cohesion
o Social inequality (material and symbolic)
o Identity (as a group and as an individual)
  tells us something about social organization
o How and why we do things

Digital media sociology:

 How digital media…
o are implicated in the way we do things
  social order
o disrupt or reproduce power
  social inequality
o shape the meaning of things
  identity
 Research on two levels:
o Micro-level
 = changes in our everyday practices
 The way we do things
 Ex. seeing delivery drivers in restaurants has become normal
o  platforms have changed our practices + new
profession that didn’t exist before
o Macro-level
 = changes to our societal institutions
 Institutionalisation
 Ex. the platform economy
o  this economy gives us opportunities, but also
challenges
o  who is responsible if a delivery driver has an
accident?
 Questions about inequality arise: What is the
most precarious? What is most beneficial to
them?
 The platform economy is centered around meeting the expectations
of the user
 But: this has micro-level implications

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,Social structure, social positions and social roles:

 Social structure = the organised patterns of relationships, rules and ‘rule
arrangements’ that govern how people interact and live together
o Organised ≠ formal
o Social institutions = arrangements of rules into established systems
 Ex. family
o Social positions = arrangements of relationships / interactions
 Ex. mom, dad, brother, …
 Culture = shared set of beliefs, norms, behaviours, values, …
o Culture and social structure are linked
 Values and beliefs shape social order
 Norms are expectations of how one should behave
 Practices are patterns of behaviour
 Rituals are habitualized behaviours
 Can include symbolic objects (that carry meaning and value)


COURSE INFORMATION:

 Centered around three questions, tied to three logics
o 1. Is 24/7 connectivity a bliss or a burden?
  network logic (H2)
o 2. Are social media making us more or less social?
  social logic
o 3. Does datafication empower or disempower?
  personal logic

 Media sociology: how media affect the social
organization of society
 Media psychology: how media affect individual
cognition, emotion and behaviour
 Media studies: the media industry in relation
to media users and audiences




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,1.1: SOCIAL STRUCTURE: WHY DO WE DO THE THINGS WE DO?

 Social structure as a set of ‘logics’
o Ex. traffic lights: red = stop, green = go
 they bring rules to society, which we all collectively follow
 Our everyday practices reflect the relationship between individuals and the social
order
o Social order: the rules that order society
 Individuals either obey or disobey these orders
  they reproduce OR challenge the social order
 Practices are thus:
 Inherently relational (= social)
o Why we do things
o Helps us organize how we do things socially
 Persistent / durable (= historical)
o Before and after our birth / death
 Cultural (= contextual)
o Variations are possible
o Social change: occurs when individuals successfully and collectively
produce a new social order
 Ex. elephant trails becoming the new structure, since people
collectively decide to not follow the main path
 Collective action is necessary to effectuate change!



1.1.1: GIDDENS’ STRUCTURATION THEORY
 Duality of structure: structure and agency as mutually constitutive
o  everyday practices reflect the relationship between individuals and the
social order
o Social structures:
 They enable and constrain human action
  provide rules and resources for meaningful action
o Agency:
 Individuals produce and reproduce social structures
 Individuals are knowledgeable, rational actors with:
o 1. The capacity for reflexivity
 A capacity to reflect on the social structure
and their role as an reproducing agent in it
o 2. The capacity to act intentionally rational
 Modifying their behaviour in line with certain
goals, that they can reasonably justify as being
worthy of pursuit
 Individuals can make choices: they can choose to take action
 Enough collective action may lead to change
 Ex. Harry Styles wearing a dress
 agency: yes ; collective change: no
 Ex. Weinstein and Epstein sexually abusing people
 they could do this because they had power
 but: this led to social action and social change (ex. MeToo)




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,  duality between structure and agency = interplay that often reveals how power is
distributed and negotiated in society


1.1.2: SOCIAL CHANGE… OR NOT
 Overthrowing a social structure is not easy
o They are tied to power
 People in power don’t like their power being eroded
o  counterpressure is always present!
o Ex. ‘woke’, MeToo, BLM, …
 Digital media can be used to establish and claim power
o Social structures are prescriptive
 They specify a way of doing things
  they make it logical to organize things repeatedly and
systematically in a certain way
o Are such ‘logics’ also present in media technologies?
 Is there an ‘Apparatgeist’?
 = a “spirit of the machine” that directs human behaviour
 ‘logics’ are present in media technologies: they direct human
behaviour
o Providing humans with a rationality of means, and
constraint upon possibilities


1.2: ORLIKOWSKI’S DUALITY OF TECHNOLOGY

 Technology is the product of human action
o Humans shape technology
o Once technology is developed, it tends to become institutionalized
 Humans will adopt it (some are successful, some are not)
 They also have agency, so they will change it
o Technology will also start to structure our actions, and can impact the
broader organization of an institution
 This in itself can have an impact on the individual




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