Digital sociology : critical perspectives

New digital technologies have fostered much debate about the nature of social relationships, institutions and structures in a new information age. An amorphous and interdisciplinary field of research has emerged, concerning itself with the complexities and contradictions involved in the fundamental shifts and radical transformations which information and communication technologies (ICTs) are purportedly bringing about across cultural, political and economic practices. From cyberselves to cyber communities, from media wars to the digital divide, sociology confronts a new digital landscape. This text takes stock of how the discipline has addressed the challenge of the digital providing a uniquely sociological framework with which to critically re-evaluate fundamental social concerns: from digital intimacies and online relationships to new forms of mediated inequality and network structures, from digitally mediated media practices to education and health 2.0, this text provides a comprehensive introduction to the transformations wrought by digital technologies to contemporary societies and a critical reflection on how the digital is reconfiguring the tools, concepts and precepts of the discipline.