Mini-Conference on Digital Sociology

Call for Abstracts

Eastern Sociological Society

Baltimore, February 22-25, 2018

In keeping with the Eastern Sociological Society’s theme of “As Time Goes By: Social and Institutional Change” the Digital Sociology Mini-Conference seeks papers that address the intersection of time and the digital.  The mini-conference especially welcomes theoretical interrogations of temporality, and examinations of the role of the digital in social and institutional change. We also seek abstracts, and wholly constituted panels, on a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Critical Theories of the Digital & Temporality: How have we theorized the digital and time? What challenges do digital media platforms change our relation to temporality?

• Digital Sociological Methods: How do traditional, analog sociological methods become digital? Are there new, “born digital” sociological methods? Is knowledge production different now? Will big data replace survey methodology?

• Digital Structures, Digital Institutions: The datafication of everyday life is posing unique challenges to the composition of social institutions and giving rise to new instantiations of education, finance, labor, and governance. How do we theorize, study, and reconceptualize these institutions?

• Identity, Community, and Networks: How do sociological concepts of micro and macro, personal and public, “front stage” and “back stage,” evolve as digital and mobile technologies increasingly blur these boundaries? How do digital environments shape identities of race, gender, sexuality and queerness? And how do the identities of those who create the platforms we use shape the platforms? How do race, gender, sexuality and queerness shape the communities and networks in which we participate?