DIGITAL MEDIA SOCIOLOGY
LESSON 1: INTRODUCTION
1. SOCIOLOGY VS PSYCHOLOGY
- Sociology studies the social organization of society
o How do people live together?
We develop certain rules --> important, otherwise there would be a lot of chaos
o What opportunities and problems arise from this?
- Questions revolve mainly around: (it has impact on…)
o Social order (and social cohesion)
o Social inequality, in a material and symbolic sense
o Identity, as a group and as individual
o Psychology: Individual cognition, emotion, behavior
- To understand how society works we have to look at other societies and compare
o For example: education in Belgium is way cheaper than in America, but how does that impact
us?
- How does digital media...
o ... implicates in ‘the way we do things’ (social order)?
o ... disrupt or reproduce power? (social inequality)?
Digital media can make certain things more equal but sometimes it can cause
inequality as well
o ... shape the meaning of things (identity)?
o Micro-level: Changes in our everyday practices
o Macro-level: Changes to our societal institutions
- Micro-level: the way we do things
o When we think about food delivery and the way that it has been normalized
o In terms of the way we do things, the digital platforms have changed the way we organized
o It has also impacted what we eat, what kind of food, how we eat (collectively, …)
o A new profession as well: delivery person
- Macro-level: institutionalization
o We can look at the way it has changed everyday life
o We can look at the economy: this type of phenomenon has created a new economy, platform
culture, … --> it thrives on new opportunities, but it causes challenges as well
For example: questions about the legal status of a delivery person
If you have an accident when you are delivering, are you responsible
because you’re an entrepreneur or is the company responsible because you
are an employee? --> opens questions about inequality
1.1 MEDIA SOCIOLOGY VS MEDIA PSYCHOLOGY
- Media sociology studies how media affects the social organization of society
- Media psychology how media affects individual cognition, emotion and behavior
- Media studies study the media industry in relation to media users/audiences
1
, - Example: does TV viewing lead to child obesity epidemic?
o Multiple causes
2-working households --> Latchkey-children, traffic & stranger danger
Addictive design --> fast food advertising
Audience diversification, commercial broadcasting
1.2 SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND SOCIAL POSITIONS AND SOCIAL ROLES
- Social structure = the organized patterns of relationships, rules and ‘rule arrangements’ that govern
how people interact and live together
o (!) Organized ≠ ‘formal’
o Arrangements of rules into established systems => social institutions
o Arrangements of relationships/interactions => social positions
- Platform Economy as an emerging social institution
o Social inequality: self-employed or employee?
o Social identity: Brand ambassadors or algorithmic slaves?
1.3 SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND CULTURE
- Culture = a shared set of beliefs, norms, behaviors, values, symbols, rituals, attitudes, ...
- Culture and social structure are linked:
o Values and beliefs are certain forces that shape social order
o Norms are expectations of how one should behave
o Practices are patterns of behavior normatively expected for certain social positions are social
roles
o Rituals are habitualized behaviors and can include objects that are symbolic (i.e. Carry
meaning and thus value)
1.4 WHY DO WE DO THE THINGS WE DO?
- Social structure as a set of logics
- Everyday practices --> reflect relationship between individuals & social order
o Social order: ‘rules’ that order society
We need rules, otherwise: society in chaos
o Individuals (dis)obey these rules through their practices --> reproducing social order/
challenging it
o Practices are thus
Inherently relational --> social
Persistent/ durable --> historical
Cultural --> contextual
- Example: olifantenpaadje/ desire trail
o People who don’t follow the rules: create a new path
- Social change: when individuals successfully & collectively produce a new social order
o If enough people --> change rules/ society
2
,1.5 GIDDENS’ STRUCTURATION THEORY (1984)
- Duality of structure: structure and agency as mutually constitutive
o Social structures: enable and constrain human action
Provides rules and resources for meaningful action
o 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
The ‘duality’ between structure and agency is an interplay that oftentimes reveals how power is
distributed and negotiated in society
- Social structures are prescriptive: they specify a way of ‘doing things’(Giddens, 1984)
o In other words: they make it logical to organize things repeatedly and systematically in a
certain manner
- There are also such ‘logics’ present in media technologies
o Apparatgeist: spirit of the machine (Katz & Aakhus, 2002)
Logics prescribed by technology that direct human behavior
Not in a deterministic way but rather by providing humans w/ both a
‘rationality of means’
2. DUALITY OF TECHNOLOGY
- Orlikowski (1992)
o Technology: product of human action + assumes structural properties
o Technology is physically constructed by actors working in given social context
o Once technology is developed & deployed --> tends to be reified & industrialized
Losing connection w/human agents that constructed it/ gave it meaning
Appears to be a part of the objective, structural properties of the organization
- Example: history of SMS
o When they developed the mobile phone, they never thought about ‘texting’
3
, Texting was invented because the engineers thought it would be handy for the
telecom operators, to let the customers known how much money is left on their
phone
(a) Insignificant byproduct of mobile telephony
o Invest zero effort in SMS because they think nobody would use it
(b) ‘free’ communication, massive adoption, desire for multimedia/ internet
(c) Massive success leads to development tariff plans
o They hop on the SMS trend, and it became expensive to start texting
3. THE STRUCTURES OF DIGITAL MEDIA: TECHNOLOGICAL AFFORDANCES
What structures are there in technology that make it logic-al to do things in a particular way?
3.1 DIGITAL MEDIA
- Technologies (devices, platforms, applications) that are connected (wired or wireless) to an underlying
technological infrastructure
o Supports data transfer
o Can be used to access, consume, create & exchange information and/or communication
- Focus on the everyday life (hence: focus on smartphones, computers, mobile and social media, …)
- Technologies made it logical to do things a certain way
- Moving target problem: technologies that persist are constantly updated
- Technology: more than the sum of its separate features
o Almost the same features, very different ‘Apparatgeist’
3.2 A FUNCTIONAL VIEW: TECHNOLOGICAL AFFORDANCES
- Affordances are “possibilities for action”
- They structure: They enable and constrain potential behavioral outcomes in a particular context
o Edit-ability, visi-bility, spread-ability, search-ability
- Technological affordances
o Technology structures (through its affordances)... and is structured through human agency
- Characteristics affordances
o Relational: perceived depending on abilities/ attributes of users
o Contextual: contexts of use
o Designed: to be readily perceived
Dominant affordance = apparatgeist
- The affordances checklist
o Three threshold criteria to be an affordance:
Criteria #1: neither the object nor a feature of the object
Criteria #2: not the outcome
Criteria #3: has variability
o A feature is present or absent, but an affordance is gradual (technologies can vary in the
extent to which they ‘afford’ something)
- Sidenote
o Affordances remains a fuzzy concept, that is often misused... you may notice this when
processing literature on digital culture (also the literature on which this course is based)...
4
LESSON 1: INTRODUCTION
1. SOCIOLOGY VS PSYCHOLOGY
- Sociology studies the social organization of society
o How do people live together?
We develop certain rules --> important, otherwise there would be a lot of chaos
o What opportunities and problems arise from this?
- Questions revolve mainly around: (it has impact on…)
o Social order (and social cohesion)
o Social inequality, in a material and symbolic sense
o Identity, as a group and as individual
o Psychology: Individual cognition, emotion, behavior
- To understand how society works we have to look at other societies and compare
o For example: education in Belgium is way cheaper than in America, but how does that impact
us?
- How does digital media...
o ... implicates in ‘the way we do things’ (social order)?
o ... disrupt or reproduce power? (social inequality)?
Digital media can make certain things more equal but sometimes it can cause
inequality as well
o ... shape the meaning of things (identity)?
o Micro-level: Changes in our everyday practices
o Macro-level: Changes to our societal institutions
- Micro-level: the way we do things
o When we think about food delivery and the way that it has been normalized
o In terms of the way we do things, the digital platforms have changed the way we organized
o It has also impacted what we eat, what kind of food, how we eat (collectively, …)
o A new profession as well: delivery person
- Macro-level: institutionalization
o We can look at the way it has changed everyday life
o We can look at the economy: this type of phenomenon has created a new economy, platform
culture, … --> it thrives on new opportunities, but it causes challenges as well
For example: questions about the legal status of a delivery person
If you have an accident when you are delivering, are you responsible
because you’re an entrepreneur or is the company responsible because you
are an employee? --> opens questions about inequality
1.1 MEDIA SOCIOLOGY VS MEDIA PSYCHOLOGY
- Media sociology studies how media affects the social organization of society
- Media psychology how media affects individual cognition, emotion and behavior
- Media studies study the media industry in relation to media users/audiences
1
, - Example: does TV viewing lead to child obesity epidemic?
o Multiple causes
2-working households --> Latchkey-children, traffic & stranger danger
Addictive design --> fast food advertising
Audience diversification, commercial broadcasting
1.2 SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND SOCIAL POSITIONS AND SOCIAL ROLES
- Social structure = the organized patterns of relationships, rules and ‘rule arrangements’ that govern
how people interact and live together
o (!) Organized ≠ ‘formal’
o Arrangements of rules into established systems => social institutions
o Arrangements of relationships/interactions => social positions
- Platform Economy as an emerging social institution
o Social inequality: self-employed or employee?
o Social identity: Brand ambassadors or algorithmic slaves?
1.3 SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND CULTURE
- Culture = a shared set of beliefs, norms, behaviors, values, symbols, rituals, attitudes, ...
- Culture and social structure are linked:
o Values and beliefs are certain forces that shape social order
o Norms are expectations of how one should behave
o Practices are patterns of behavior normatively expected for certain social positions are social
roles
o Rituals are habitualized behaviors and can include objects that are symbolic (i.e. Carry
meaning and thus value)
1.4 WHY DO WE DO THE THINGS WE DO?
- Social structure as a set of logics
- Everyday practices --> reflect relationship between individuals & social order
o Social order: ‘rules’ that order society
We need rules, otherwise: society in chaos
o Individuals (dis)obey these rules through their practices --> reproducing social order/
challenging it
o Practices are thus
Inherently relational --> social
Persistent/ durable --> historical
Cultural --> contextual
- Example: olifantenpaadje/ desire trail
o People who don’t follow the rules: create a new path
- Social change: when individuals successfully & collectively produce a new social order
o If enough people --> change rules/ society
2
,1.5 GIDDENS’ STRUCTURATION THEORY (1984)
- Duality of structure: structure and agency as mutually constitutive
o Social structures: enable and constrain human action
Provides rules and resources for meaningful action
o 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
The ‘duality’ between structure and agency is an interplay that oftentimes reveals how power is
distributed and negotiated in society
- Social structures are prescriptive: they specify a way of ‘doing things’(Giddens, 1984)
o In other words: they make it logical to organize things repeatedly and systematically in a
certain manner
- There are also such ‘logics’ present in media technologies
o Apparatgeist: spirit of the machine (Katz & Aakhus, 2002)
Logics prescribed by technology that direct human behavior
Not in a deterministic way but rather by providing humans w/ both a
‘rationality of means’
2. DUALITY OF TECHNOLOGY
- Orlikowski (1992)
o Technology: product of human action + assumes structural properties
o Technology is physically constructed by actors working in given social context
o Once technology is developed & deployed --> tends to be reified & industrialized
Losing connection w/human agents that constructed it/ gave it meaning
Appears to be a part of the objective, structural properties of the organization
- Example: history of SMS
o When they developed the mobile phone, they never thought about ‘texting’
3
, Texting was invented because the engineers thought it would be handy for the
telecom operators, to let the customers known how much money is left on their
phone
(a) Insignificant byproduct of mobile telephony
o Invest zero effort in SMS because they think nobody would use it
(b) ‘free’ communication, massive adoption, desire for multimedia/ internet
(c) Massive success leads to development tariff plans
o They hop on the SMS trend, and it became expensive to start texting
3. THE STRUCTURES OF DIGITAL MEDIA: TECHNOLOGICAL AFFORDANCES
What structures are there in technology that make it logic-al to do things in a particular way?
3.1 DIGITAL MEDIA
- Technologies (devices, platforms, applications) that are connected (wired or wireless) to an underlying
technological infrastructure
o Supports data transfer
o Can be used to access, consume, create & exchange information and/or communication
- Focus on the everyday life (hence: focus on smartphones, computers, mobile and social media, …)
- Technologies made it logical to do things a certain way
- Moving target problem: technologies that persist are constantly updated
- Technology: more than the sum of its separate features
o Almost the same features, very different ‘Apparatgeist’
3.2 A FUNCTIONAL VIEW: TECHNOLOGICAL AFFORDANCES
- Affordances are “possibilities for action”
- They structure: They enable and constrain potential behavioral outcomes in a particular context
o Edit-ability, visi-bility, spread-ability, search-ability
- Technological affordances
o Technology structures (through its affordances)... and is structured through human agency
- Characteristics affordances
o Relational: perceived depending on abilities/ attributes of users
o Contextual: contexts of use
o Designed: to be readily perceived
Dominant affordance = apparatgeist
- The affordances checklist
o Three threshold criteria to be an affordance:
Criteria #1: neither the object nor a feature of the object
Criteria #2: not the outcome
Criteria #3: has variability
o A feature is present or absent, but an affordance is gradual (technologies can vary in the
extent to which they ‘afford’ something)
- Sidenote
o Affordances remains a fuzzy concept, that is often misused... you may notice this when
processing literature on digital culture (also the literature on which this course is based)...
4
