5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Digital formations from Internet and social media to Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and robotics are profoundly reshaping the world, exacerbating inequalities, allowing unprecedented surveillance, and disrupting old models of mass communication, deliberative publics, election campaigns, identity, work, and social struggles. The observation that the new digital technologies have global reach, but are not globally uniform, calls for international and interregional research dialogue and comparisons. Diverse social actors cooperate, compete, or are in conflict over the social shaping of digital formations. Outcomes vary according to differential access to resources, political-legal frameworks, and creative agency. Papers are welcome that address questions such as: Who contests the power of oligopolistic corporate players? How are regulatory agencies intervening (or failing)? How do approaches in the US, Europe, China, India, and elsewhere differ? Who captures the benefits of productivity gains, who loses out, and on what factors does this depend on? What kind of social actors emerge to challenge current trends, expose preventable implications, and produce alternative visions? What role can social science play in discovering the leverage that exists to counter hegemonic trends, or how such leverage could be created? - ISA Research Committees Futures Research (RC07), Participation, Organizational Democracy and Self-Management (RC10), Sociology of Communication, Knowledge and Culture (RC14), Sociology of Science and Technology (RC23), and Working Group Digital Society (WG10) are planning one or more Joint Sessions on contesting power and vision in the formation of digital futures.