Discuss and Assess #2 Varieties of Digital Sociological Research

In the "#notracist: Exploring racism denial talk on Twitter" reading and the "Employee monitoring in a digital context" reading, there are apparent differences between the research analysis because one takes a micro-level analysis. In contrast, the other takes a macro-level analysis towards the data they collect. Another research difference between these two readings specifically is that The "#notracist: Exploring racism denial talk on Twitter" article takes more of a digital ethnographic approach by taking to the social media application of Twitter and using an analytic tool to observe the hashtags/tweets/posts in order to gather the needed data for analysis. At the same time, the “Employee monitoring in a digital context" article used a survey to ask individuals employed at an organization questions about the digital sphere/surveillance within their work environment. Within Rosengren and Ottosson's article, how these organizations' digital actions affect their employees' lives is what their research is oriented toward. The "#notracist: Exploring racism denial talk on Twitter" article orients their data collection directly to the digital space. Overall, these two readings differentiate from one another by showing how the digital space is directly affecting versus indirectly affecting society, whether at the individual level or institutional level.

Looking at how the digital environment affects an entire organization's actions towards its employees and then subsequently how these employees feel versus how the digital environment affects individual action and behavior, such as making tweets on Twitter. It is a trickle-down system of influence, really, and it just depends on where this digital sociological phenomenon stems from, whether the digital space, the individual, or an institution. So, the question to always ask oneself and in the research, of course, within the digital realm is "Who am I influencing with my actions and behavior?" and "Who is influencing me with their actions and behaviors?". I didn't realize until I was comparing these two readings, in particular, how much the digital space has meddled in our lives. It affects our entire societies' actions at some level, whether at the individual, the group, or the institutional, which in turn is changing our behaviors, values, and relationships with ourselves, these institutions, and groups that we are apart of.

In the same aspect, these different readings concerning the various examples of research all portray a broad theme of trying to understand the relationship between humans (at some type of level: individual, group, institutional), social phenomena, and the non-human such as certain digital technologies and devices (Sharma &Brooker). What has got me thinking concerning the “#notracist: Exploring racism denial talk on Twitter" reading is how web 3.0 will change and develop the digital body and perhaps digital institutions? Will it affect us in any way or switch our views on digital sociological research? We no longer live in the web 2.0 era because technologies such as artificial intelligence (A.I) have evolved society into the beginning/middle stages of web 3.0. Look at Amazon Alexa or Siri being these automative assistants/non-humans and how their very existence can change our belief systems on how society works and functions, for example. In the future, it will be interesting to see how digital sociological research develops as the digital and technological world advances. I mentioned this in my last post, but the brain chip that Elon Musk is creating with his company Neuralink is so crazy to me. It is just an idea now, but in the future, it could become a reality, and having digital technology actually in our physical bodies will be so interesting to see how it affects society. There are just so many more possibilities in the future and popping up currently. These new technological and digital inventions/ forms of media are continuously expanding the digital data field for sociologists to analyze and collect new digital data, social problems, and phenomena within the digital space.

p.s. its a miracle I can post this blog because the ice storm that has hit the Richmond area has left me without power since yesterday. I am using the little remaining juice on my phone to hotspot to my computer to be able to make this post. Hope everyone is having a better weekend than me lol.