Digital Cultures, Online Communities, and New Forms of Interaction

Digital technologies and online platforms have transformed the nature of social interaction, communication, identity formation, and regulation across the globe. As societies become increasingly interconnected through virtual spaces, new forms of deviance have emerged that challenge conventional understandings of crime, morality, and social control. Cyber harassment, online radicalization, misinformation, digital vigilantism, identity fraud, cybercrime, and platform-based exploitation have become critical concerns within contemporary digital cultures. This session seeks to explore how online communities shape, normalize, resist, and regulate deviant behaviours in rapidly changing technological environments. It invites interdisciplinary contributions examining the role of social media platforms, algorithms, artificial intelligence, surveillance technologies, and digital governance in defining and controlling deviance. The session further encourages critical engagement with questions of privacy, freedom of expression, digital ethics, and transnational regulation in virtual spaces. Particular attention will be given to the ways in which digital environments create new mechanisms of exclusion, resistance, and social control. By examining the intersections between technology, power, and deviance, this session aims to contribute to broader sociological debates on digital modernity and the transformation of social regulation in turbulent times.

Keywords - Digital culture, cybercrime, online communities, technology, social regulation