Theme 1: Is 24/7 Connectivity a Bliss or a Burden?
(The NETWORK logic)
L1: Introduction
What is this course about?
- knowledge: Developing a thorough socio-historical understanding of how digital media shape
society and vice versa (you as a digital media sociologist)
- skills: Developing abstract thought by deconstructing everyday media phenomena with the aid of
abstract theory and concepts (you as a social scientist)
- attitude: Developing the capacity to make informed judgments over societal issues (you as a
digital citizen)
analysing 3 core questions in this course:
Each of these questions revolves around a major change that digitization has brought to our society!
Sociology
Sociology studies the social organization of society
- How do people live together?
- What opportunities and problems arise from this?
Questions revolve mainly around (Durkheim):
- Social order (and social cohesion)
o What is the social order of society? How does people live together
- Social inequality, in a material and symbolic sense
o What inequalities are there in society? How are privileges distributed?
o The (unequal) distribution of power in society supported through ideologies
- Identity, as a group and as individual
o How do people find meaning/identity, both individually and collectively?
o How do people through interacting with each other have socially constructed a culture
with meaning (norms, values, symbols, rituals)?
Psychology: Individual: cognition, emotion, behavior
1
,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, “the way we do things”
bv: Increased use of food delivery apps instead of cooking at home.
Macro-level: Changes to our societal institutions (institutionalization)
Bv: Growth of the food delivery industry, impacting traditional restaurants
Bv: Digitalization of education (e-learning, online classes).
Digital media sociology
= studies the interplay between (digital) media and the social organization of society
intersects with disciplines:
- media psychology:
o study of processes of media selection and media effects
o how media affect individual cognition(thoughts), emotion and behavior
o media sociology often requires understanding of psychological processes
- media studies:
o study of media focussing on the logics embedded in
o these logics can’t be separated from the contents that are ‘mediated’ through them
o focus on the media industry and how it delivers messages to audiences
- cultural/media sociology:
o studies how media affect the social organization of society
o media as cultural artefacts
o media practices as reflections of how individuals connect to the social order
o DMS is a subfield of cultural sociology!
Cultivation theory (Gerbner) = tv viewers internalize the distorted reality they see on tv, so that their
world view corresponds with the view that is portrayed in tv shows. Viewers develop a ‘mean world
view’ = perceiving the world as more violent than it actually is
Over the past two decades, digital media have deeply impacted the social organization of society.
Because digital media have become so taken-for-granted, we often fail to see this impact
2
,Digital media sociology aims to lift the veil over the taken-for-grantedness. How does digitization affect…
- our everyday practices (micro-level)
- our social institutions and the social order (macro-level)
Social structure & social positions and social roles
Social structure refers to the organized patterns of relationships, rules and rule arrangements
that shape how people interact and live together.
- Organized ≠ formal! → Social structure includes both formal (laws, institutions) and
informal (social norms, traditions) elements. = Het gaat niet alleen om wetten en
officiële regels, maar ook om gewoontes en ongeschreven regels.
- Arrangements of rules into established systems → social institutions = Als regels en
afspraken zich herhalen en georganiseerd worden, vormen ze grotere systemen.
vb: In onderwijs zijn er regels over wie les mag geven en hoe examens werken → scholen en universiteiten zijn een
sociale institutie. Of In rechtspraak zijn er wetten en rechters die bepalen wat legaal is → rechtbanken en het
rechtssysteem vormen een sociale institutie.
- Arrangements of relationships/interactions → social positions = Mensen hebben
verschillende rollen en posities in de samenleving, afhankelijk van hun relaties met
anderen.
Vb: Een leraar heeft een formele positie in een school en geeft les aan leerlingen. Een ouder heeft een sociale rol binnen
een gezin en zorgt voor een kind. Een werknemer heeft een positie binnen een bedrijf en voert taken uit.
Platformeconomie
as an emerging social institution
- Social inequality/position: self-employed or employee?
o Platformwerkers hebben geen vast contract, maar ook weinig controle over hun werk.
Zijn ze zelfstandigen of eigenlijk werknemers zonder rechten?
- Social identity: Brand ambassadors or algorithmic slaves?
o Sommigen zien zichzelf als ondernemers en merkambassadeurs, anderen voelen zich
gestuurd door algoritmes zonder echte vrijheid.
Vb. Recruitement ad TakeAway = ‘become a brand ambassador in your city’
Social structure & culture
Culture = a shared set of beliefs, norms, behaviors, values, symbols, rituals, attitudes, …
The link with social structure:
- values and beliefs are forces that shape social order = how society is organized.
- norms are expectations of how people should behave.
- patterns of behavior normatively expected for certain social positions are social
3
, roles vb teacher, parent
- rituals are habitual behaviors or objects that carry symbolic meaning and thus value
vb: birthdays, national holidays
Social structure: why do we do things we do?
Social structure as a set of logics
The way we do things in everyday life (= our everyday practices) is not random. There are patterns
shaped by society in the way people organize themselves and the way people behave. These patterns
reflect the relationship between individuals and the social order.
Social structure/order = rules and norms that order society/give structure to life (partly informal). A set
of logics!
Individuals can either follow or break these rules, which means they either maintain or change the
system. (= they are either reproducing the social order or challenging it)
Our behaviors (or practices) are:
- Social = inherently relational (they happen in relation to others).
- Stable over time = persistent/durable (they come from history and tradition).
- Shaped by culture = cultural = contextual (they depend on the context).
Social change occurs when individuals successfully and collectively produce a new social order.
Giddens’ structuration theory (1984)
Duality of structure = structure and agency as mutually constitutive = society and individuals
influence each other = the interplay between social structures and individual agency
Society gives structure to people’s lives by enabling and constraining their actions. People
constitute society and have the agency to structure it through their actions and beliefs:
1. Social structures: enable and constrain human action (provides rules & resources for
meaningful action) rules and systems both help and limit what people can do. Vb.
Gender: it’s more logical that woman cry or that men take power on the work floor
2. Agency = people’s ability to act: Individuals produce and reproduce social
structure. They are knowledgeable, rational actors with:
o the capacity for ‘reflexivity’: a capacity to reflect on the social structure and their
role as reproducing agent in it
o Individuals are not just passive followers of rules; they can think about the
system and their role in it (reflexivity).
o 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.
They can also make choices to change their behavior based on their goals
(intentional rationality).
4
(The NETWORK logic)
L1: Introduction
What is this course about?
- knowledge: Developing a thorough socio-historical understanding of how digital media shape
society and vice versa (you as a digital media sociologist)
- skills: Developing abstract thought by deconstructing everyday media phenomena with the aid of
abstract theory and concepts (you as a social scientist)
- attitude: Developing the capacity to make informed judgments over societal issues (you as a
digital citizen)
analysing 3 core questions in this course:
Each of these questions revolves around a major change that digitization has brought to our society!
Sociology
Sociology studies the social organization of society
- How do people live together?
- What opportunities and problems arise from this?
Questions revolve mainly around (Durkheim):
- Social order (and social cohesion)
o What is the social order of society? How does people live together
- Social inequality, in a material and symbolic sense
o What inequalities are there in society? How are privileges distributed?
o The (unequal) distribution of power in society supported through ideologies
- Identity, as a group and as individual
o How do people find meaning/identity, both individually and collectively?
o How do people through interacting with each other have socially constructed a culture
with meaning (norms, values, symbols, rituals)?
Psychology: Individual: cognition, emotion, behavior
1
,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, “the way we do things”
bv: Increased use of food delivery apps instead of cooking at home.
Macro-level: Changes to our societal institutions (institutionalization)
Bv: Growth of the food delivery industry, impacting traditional restaurants
Bv: Digitalization of education (e-learning, online classes).
Digital media sociology
= studies the interplay between (digital) media and the social organization of society
intersects with disciplines:
- media psychology:
o study of processes of media selection and media effects
o how media affect individual cognition(thoughts), emotion and behavior
o media sociology often requires understanding of psychological processes
- media studies:
o study of media focussing on the logics embedded in
o these logics can’t be separated from the contents that are ‘mediated’ through them
o focus on the media industry and how it delivers messages to audiences
- cultural/media sociology:
o studies how media affect the social organization of society
o media as cultural artefacts
o media practices as reflections of how individuals connect to the social order
o DMS is a subfield of cultural sociology!
Cultivation theory (Gerbner) = tv viewers internalize the distorted reality they see on tv, so that their
world view corresponds with the view that is portrayed in tv shows. Viewers develop a ‘mean world
view’ = perceiving the world as more violent than it actually is
Over the past two decades, digital media have deeply impacted the social organization of society.
Because digital media have become so taken-for-granted, we often fail to see this impact
2
,Digital media sociology aims to lift the veil over the taken-for-grantedness. How does digitization affect…
- our everyday practices (micro-level)
- our social institutions and the social order (macro-level)
Social structure & social positions and social roles
Social structure refers to the organized patterns of relationships, rules and rule arrangements
that shape how people interact and live together.
- Organized ≠ formal! → Social structure includes both formal (laws, institutions) and
informal (social norms, traditions) elements. = Het gaat niet alleen om wetten en
officiële regels, maar ook om gewoontes en ongeschreven regels.
- Arrangements of rules into established systems → social institutions = Als regels en
afspraken zich herhalen en georganiseerd worden, vormen ze grotere systemen.
vb: In onderwijs zijn er regels over wie les mag geven en hoe examens werken → scholen en universiteiten zijn een
sociale institutie. Of In rechtspraak zijn er wetten en rechters die bepalen wat legaal is → rechtbanken en het
rechtssysteem vormen een sociale institutie.
- Arrangements of relationships/interactions → social positions = Mensen hebben
verschillende rollen en posities in de samenleving, afhankelijk van hun relaties met
anderen.
Vb: Een leraar heeft een formele positie in een school en geeft les aan leerlingen. Een ouder heeft een sociale rol binnen
een gezin en zorgt voor een kind. Een werknemer heeft een positie binnen een bedrijf en voert taken uit.
Platformeconomie
as an emerging social institution
- Social inequality/position: self-employed or employee?
o Platformwerkers hebben geen vast contract, maar ook weinig controle over hun werk.
Zijn ze zelfstandigen of eigenlijk werknemers zonder rechten?
- Social identity: Brand ambassadors or algorithmic slaves?
o Sommigen zien zichzelf als ondernemers en merkambassadeurs, anderen voelen zich
gestuurd door algoritmes zonder echte vrijheid.
Vb. Recruitement ad TakeAway = ‘become a brand ambassador in your city’
Social structure & culture
Culture = a shared set of beliefs, norms, behaviors, values, symbols, rituals, attitudes, …
The link with social structure:
- values and beliefs are forces that shape social order = how society is organized.
- norms are expectations of how people should behave.
- patterns of behavior normatively expected for certain social positions are social
3
, roles vb teacher, parent
- rituals are habitual behaviors or objects that carry symbolic meaning and thus value
vb: birthdays, national holidays
Social structure: why do we do things we do?
Social structure as a set of logics
The way we do things in everyday life (= our everyday practices) is not random. There are patterns
shaped by society in the way people organize themselves and the way people behave. These patterns
reflect the relationship between individuals and the social order.
Social structure/order = rules and norms that order society/give structure to life (partly informal). A set
of logics!
Individuals can either follow or break these rules, which means they either maintain or change the
system. (= they are either reproducing the social order or challenging it)
Our behaviors (or practices) are:
- Social = inherently relational (they happen in relation to others).
- Stable over time = persistent/durable (they come from history and tradition).
- Shaped by culture = cultural = contextual (they depend on the context).
Social change occurs when individuals successfully and collectively produce a new social order.
Giddens’ structuration theory (1984)
Duality of structure = structure and agency as mutually constitutive = society and individuals
influence each other = the interplay between social structures and individual agency
Society gives structure to people’s lives by enabling and constraining their actions. People
constitute society and have the agency to structure it through their actions and beliefs:
1. Social structures: enable and constrain human action (provides rules & resources for
meaningful action) rules and systems both help and limit what people can do. Vb.
Gender: it’s more logical that woman cry or that men take power on the work floor
2. Agency = people’s ability to act: Individuals produce and reproduce social
structure. They are knowledgeable, rational actors with:
o the capacity for ‘reflexivity’: a capacity to reflect on the social structure and their
role as reproducing agent in it
o Individuals are not just passive followers of rules; they can think about the
system and their role in it (reflexivity).
o 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.
They can also make choices to change their behavior based on their goals
(intentional rationality).
4
