Digital Sociology and Digital Methods
Short description
This group brings together researchers studying how digital technologies (including artificial intelligence) and the internet affect social behaviours, practices, and structures as well as researchers using digital methods and tools, such as digital ethnography (netnography), text-mining and natural language processing (NLP), or network analysis, all of which blur traditional boundaries between qualitative and quantitative research. We examine, for example, communication patterns on internet discussion forums, employers’ monitoring of employees and applicants on social media, well-being in digital and hybrid meetings as well as security guards' and police officers' use of body cameras.
The department's research is also interested in practices of "sousveillance" (surveillance from below or inverse surveillance) such as citizens' use of footage of the activities of authorities and corporations or the digital dissemination of information that was previously controlled by experts, such as digitized health records. The group is characterized by a wide range of areas of interest, which means that its members are also conducting studies on how new digital technologies are of importance for various types of jobs and work practices, for how meetings are conducted or how digital data is used for coordinating collective action such as social movements and citizen initiatives, as well as the dissemination of information through digital media and its significance for crime, political mobilization, and the like.
In this research field there is are also an ongoing discussion about innovative research methods for handling digital data for research. Scientists in the group use both qualitative and quantitative analyses of digital material, as well as observations of digitally enabled practitices and interviews on the use of digital data.
Researchers
Christel Backman
Surveillance, backgrund checks, privacy, recruitment, social media
Micael Björk
Hans Ekbrand
Cecilia Hansen Löfstrand
Surveillance
Christoph Haug
Organizing, communication, meetings
Anna Hedenus
Surveillance in Working Life, background check-ups, integity, recruitment, social media
Karl Malmqvist
Jesper Petersson
E-health citizen sensing, sharing economy
Bertil Rolandsson
Work practices, authorities, social media, sharing, open data
Anton Törnberg
Automated text analysis, social network analysis, social media, net hatred and extreme-right movements, political mobilization
Sara Uhnoo
Volunteer mobilization, crime learning, police control, non-profit crime prevention, e-volunteers
Mattias Wahlström
The role of online social media in social movements, political mobilization, protests, and political violence.
Jing wu
Elaheh Kimia