Digital Sociology Search for Understanding the Power Dynamics of Data Flows

Digital Sociology faces four controversies in the search to understand contemporary power dynamics of data flows across different scales. The first is theoretical and methodological scoping of the data state and data flows. The inflexion points from the rise of the Data Welfare State, platform membership, the current disinformation in the technomediatic public sphere, and conspiracy narratives about the Great Reset to modelling the countering of propaganda and psychological well-being among immigrants are the first. The second will disentangle the spatial dynamics of data flows. Problems from the theorisation of digital methods with the potential of anchoring Digital Sociology to delving into AI-driven voter sentiments through sentiment analysis by taking social media platforms as political arenas and in situ analysis of data flows steered by diverse influencing actors in the Philippines, indigenous activists in Brazil, feminists in South Africa’s context, to queer subversive modality in China will be addressed. The third group will unpack the challenging remote control of data and society by examining the two-faced gamification as well as the unionisation move in the Polish video game industry, together with issues of remote work seen from a methodologically intersectional perspective to double shaping of technology and care work by digitalisation and dilemmas of students’ trustworthy conduct in AI-driven times. The fourth discussion group will focus, from the critical feminist perspective, on data circuits as a challenge to Digital Sociology, encompassing cyber security, digital memory, and the feminist performance of the gamer identity. It will be held in Spanish.