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“A Digital Sociological Approach to Digital Inequality” – Abstract for “Digital Sociologies” (forthcoming, Polity Press)

This paper showcases a comparative study of young people from two contrasting educational communities: an elite private school in central London (with a wealthy multi-ethnic intake) and a vocational college on Englandā€™s south coast (with primarily a white working class constituency). For this study, a combination of uniquely innovative digital methods and traditional qualitative methods were used to investigate how young people used the Web; its online encyclopaedias, social networks, and search engines, to inform themselves about highly politicised and contested topics such as immigration. I argue existing research that addresses digital information practices, via its methodologies, marginalises young peopleā€™s subjectivities and divides them into binary categories such as savvy or naĆÆve or skilled and unskilled. It therefore sacrifices a more nuanced understanding of digital inequality for summative judgements. By operationalising the sociological youth (a competent social actor who is able to reflect on his or her practices) this research challenges the current orthodoxy in relation to youth and digital inequality.

The digital research methods afforded me the opportunity compare self-reported practices with observational data from a web proxy server, history files, and search engine queries. With its reflexive application of digital methods and its use of STS and social and cultural practice theory to analyse the qualitative data this research substantiates the spirit of digital sociology.

Posted in About My Research, Abstracts.


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