These are the papers and presentations from the first Digital Sociology Conference (February 27-28, 2015), organized as a ‘mini-conference’ in conjunction with the Eastern Sociological Society (ESS) in New York, NY.  The conference was co-organized by Jessie Daniels, Karen Gregory and Tressie McMillan Cottom. The initial conference was a huge success; we received 60 submissions from scholars in 11 countries.

We encouraged all participants to post their papers ahead of the conference to the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). For the site, you need to register your own account and upload your paper directly. In case you’re not familiar, SSRN is a global, online repository of scholarly research in the social sciences. Here is a recent paper by Deborah Lupton at SSRN. By posting to SSRN, you (the author) retain copyright. Posting your paper to SSRN is not considered “prior publication” by journals or book publishers. For more, see their FAQ. We also encouraged all participants to share their slides ahead of the conference, using this collective Slideshare account. We’ve added links to papers and presentations below.

Recent digital sociology work by the co-organizers:

• Tressie Cottom, “Intersectionality and Critical Engagement with the Internet”
• Karen Gregory, “Weird Solidarities” 
• Jessie Daniels, “The Trouble with White Feminism: Whiteness, Digital Activism, and the Intersectional Internet”

* * *

FRIDAY: 8:30a-10a Panel: Queer, Maternal, and Desperate: Accumulating Value from Online Sociality Session#83, Room 3.03 

Kara Van Cleaf, City University of New York (CUNY)
“Men Code, Women Comment, and Kids Play With Sticks: Gender and Class Narratives and Anxieties around Digital Participation”

Andrew McKinney, City University of New York (CUNY)
“‘Cookie Cutter Takes’: Extracting Value From Exuberance in Desperation at Bleacher Report”

Greg Goldberg, Wesleyan University
“Queering the Social Online”

Benjamin Haber, City University of New York (CUNY)
“Queer Capitalism and Digital Sociality”

Josh Scannell, City University of New York (CUNY)
“Carceral Life Itself: Datafication and the Incarceration of Liveliness”

Moderator/Discussant: Karen Gregory, City University of New York (CUNY)

FRIDAY: 8:30a-10:15a Emergent Politics Session #84, Room 3.04 

Pertti Ahonen; University of Helsinki
“Before Big Data: Using Small Data Study of Politics and Law to Examine and Assess Two Methods of Big Data Analysis”

Jessica Finnigan, Kings College and Nancy Ross, Dixie State University
“Out of Obscurity: Mormon Feminism in the Digital Age”

Sriram Mohan, Tata Institute of Social Sciences
“Politics, Polemics and the ‘Internet Hindu’: Identity, Community and Political Speech in the Indian Cyberspace”

Duygu Basaran Sahin, The Graduate Center, CUNY
“Social Media and Politics in Turkey: A Mysterious Relationship”

erator/Discussant:  Jeffrey Alan Johnson, Utah Valley University

FRIDAY: 12p-1:30p Panel: Critical Theories of the Digital Session #140, Room 3.04 

Deborah Lupton, University of Canberra
“Digital Sociology: Definitions, Developments and Directions”

Rebecca Tiger, Middlebury College,
“Disruptive Technology”: Addiction and Surveillance in the Digital World”

Noortje Marres, Goldsmiths, University of London
David Moats, Goldsmiths, University of London
“The inherent Ambiguity of Digital Sociology’s Object: On Mapping Privacy Debates with Twitter”

Moderator/Discussant: Jessie Daniels, City University of New York (CUNY)

FRIDAY: 1:45p-3:15p Panel: Big Data: Histories, Futures, and Societies Session #171, Room 3.04 

Susan Halford, University of Southampton
“Sociological Engagements with Big Data: Methodological and Theoretical Approaches,”

Timothy Recuber, Princeton University,
“Analog Discourse Analysis in Forgotten Digital Spaces”

Yulia Grinberg, Columbia University,
“The Emperor’s New Data Clothes”

Alexia Maddox, Deakin University
“A Model for Articulating the Data intersections Between the Networked Individual and the Formation of Digital Community”

Moderator/Discussant: Joshua Scannell, City University of New York (CUNY)

FRIDAY: 3:30p-5:00p Panel: Public Digital Sociology: Journalism, Citizen Engagement, and Crowdfunding Session #201, Room 3.04 

Mark Carrigan, University of Warwick
“An Invitation to Digital Public Sociology”

Angèle Christin, The New School for Social Research
“Just Counting Clicks? How Web Analytics Shape the Market for Online News”

Nisa Malli, University of Ottawa,
“Open Government and the 2.0 Model of Citizen Engagement”

Moderator/Discussant: Andrew Mckinney, City University of New York (CUNY)

FRIDAY EVENING: DIGITAL SOCIOLOGY HAPPY HOUR & RECEPTION: 5-8pm, Playwright Celtic Pub, 732 8th Avenue, between 45th & 46th St.

SCHEDULE: SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28 

SATURDAY: 8:30a-10:00a Panel: Race, Racism, and Digitally Mediated Spaces Session #228, Room 3.04

Maryann Erigha, Temple University
“Digital Media Activism and Black Mobilization Against Racial Attacks”

Theresa Hunt, New Jersey Institute of Technology
“The Digital Solidarity Trap: Social Movement Research, Online Activism and Accessing the Othered Others”

Nicole Cooke, The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
“From Memes and Mashups to Culture Jamming: Using Literacy Skills to Navigate Cultural Messages on the Internet” (paper)
Nicole Cooke slides

Discussant/Moderator: Jessie Daniels, City University of New York (CUNY)

SATURDAY: 10:15a-11:45a Panel: Digital Culture and Economy Session #259, Room 3.04 

Scarlett Lindeman, Sharon Zukin & Laurie Hurson, City University of New York (CUNY), The Graduate Center
“The Omnivore’s Neighborhood?: Online Restaurant Reviews, Race, and Gentrification.”

Robert Reece, Duke University (not attending)
“The Digital Sex Work Economy and Sex Work Adjacent Businesses”

William Trevor Jamerson, Virginia Tech
“Race, Discourse, and the Cultural Economy of Neoliberal New York: An Analysis of Online Tourist Reviews of Harlem Heritage Tours”

Cassaundra Rodriguez, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
“Chinese Maternity Tourists and ‘Anchor Babies’: Online Commentators’ Disdain and Racialized Conditional Acceptance of Non-citizen Reproduction”

Moderator/Discussant: Kara Van Cleaf, City University of New York (CUNY)

SATURDAY: 12:00p-1:30p Panel: Digital Structures, Digital Institutions: Education Session #285, Room 3.04 

Kijana Crawford, Rochester Institute of Technology
Considerations for the Effective Use of Digital Media to Mentor and Advance Women of Color

Jeffrey Alan Johnson, Utah Valley University
“Representing Inforgs”

Neil Selwyn, Monash University
“Data Lessons … Making Sense of the Datafication of Education Institutions” (slides) (related paper)

Edwin Mayorga, Swarthmore College
“Acts of Re-Membering: #BarrioEdProj, Impact and Digital Critical Participatory Action Research”

Moderator/Discussant: Tressie McMillan Cottom, Emory University

SATURDAY: 1:45p-3:15p Panel: Digital Personas, Digital Bodies Session #314, Room 3.04 

Ian Sheineit, Yale University, University at Albany SUNY
“Claiming authority online: An analysis of news content producers’ biographical self-narrations”

Joy White, University of Greenwich
“ ‘Just Type My Name in Google and See What Comes Up’: Creating an Online Persona in The Urban Music Industry”

Elizabeth WIssinger, BMCC, City University of New York (CUNY)
“Downloadable You: Wearable Technology, Embodiment, and the Future of Digital Human Interface”

Moderator/Discussant: Benjamin Haber, City University of New York (CUNY

SATURDAY, 3:30pm-5pm: Concurrent Roundtables All Roundtables are in Room 5.08 

SATURDAY, 3:30pm-5pm: Social Media and Social Patterns Room 5.08 

Anja Bechman and Peter Vahlstrup, Aarhus University
“Private Facebook Data Patterns in a Broad National Sample”

Julia Nevarez, Kean University
“Mediated subjectivities: care of the self in the digital global urbanity”

Francesca Tripodi, University of Virginia
“‘Yaking’ about College Life: A Case Study of Media-in-Interaction”

Julie B. Wiest; University of Pennsylvania, West Chester
“Violations via Vaguebooking: The Importance of Interaction Norms on Social Media”

Wimonsiri Hemthanon, Universität Passau
“Quo Vadis Thailand: Facebook and the Thai Middle Class during the Political Turmoil”

SATURDAY, 3:30pm-5pm: Digital Futures

Stephen Barnard, St. Lawrence University
“Can You Digit? Digital Sociology’s Vocational Promise”

Brooke Dinsmore, Ana Campos-Holland and Gina Pol, Connecticut College
“Gendered Social-Media Performances and Issues of Authenticity within Hybrid Online-Offline Youth Peer Cultures”

Susan Halford,C.J. Pope, Leslie Carr and Mark Weal, University of Southampton
“Digital Futures? Towards a Critical Politics of Practice with the Semantic Web”

SATURDAY, 3:30pm-5pm: Approaches to Digital Methods (I) Room 5.08 

Harry Dyer, University of East Anglia
“Superman 2.0: How Comic Books can help us unpack ontological and methodological issues in Digital Sociology”

Rebecca Nash, University of Southampton
“Employing Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis”

Cassidy Puckett, Northwestern University
“How Culture Structures Opportunity: Explaining Differences in Adolescents’ Approach to Learning Technology”

Sophie Mützel, University of Lucerne
“Text as Data For a Cultural Digital Sociology”

SATURDAY, 3:30pm-5pm: Approaches to Digital Methods (II) Room 5.08 

Sava Saheli Singh and Tim Maughan, New York University
“Digital Futures: Design Fiction as a Sociological Tool”

Calle Rosengren and Mark Ottoson, University of Lund
“Digitization, Employee Monitoring, Trust and Control”

Sharon Sznitman, Nehama Lewis and Danielle Taubman, University of Haifa
“Analysing Twitter as an Opportunity to Understand Substance Use”

Selen Yanmaz, Boston College
“Revolution will not be Televised, It will be Tweeted: Digital Media, Activism and Turkey’s Gezi Movement”

Gowoon Jung and Joseph Yi, SUNY Albany
“Debating Multicultural Korea”