The development of sociology in the context of digitalization: challenges and tasks

The article examines the development of sociology in the context of digitalization, outlining the main challenges and tasks. It is noted that the impact of digital technologies on society is manifested primarily in the sphere of interaction and communication between people. The digital society became possible due to the introduction of a complex technological infrastructure, the totality of elements of which constitutes the content of digitalization. It is emphasized that the ubiquitous digitalization caused by the capabilities of neural networks such as ChatGPT is an important indicator that artificial intelligence is increasingly penetrating social reality. Digital sociology is designed to provide a theoretical understanding of the processes of digitalization, as it offers a whole range of methodological practices and methods based on new digital technologies (for example, big data technologies) for quantitative and qualitative sociological research. Digital sociology is interested in how people become continuous producers of digital data: when passing through a social environment monitored by cameras, when activating the GPS of a smartphone and indicating its geographical location, when entering e-mail, when visiting websites and when searching on Google, etc. As a result, a person becomes what digital sociology calls digital data subjects – “subjects who produce digital data”. It is thanks to digitalization that the realities of a global network society are created. In the global social space, a reality has now emerged in the form of social networks, which have formed a completely new communicative paradigm. Social networks have brought completely new opportunities to everyday life and have created previously unprecedented risks. These changes have not bypassed the practical side of sociology, hence the emphasis on studying the impact of digital technologies on the epistemology of sociology. It is noted that digital sociology is not just sociologists who study and theorize how other people use digital technologies, or focus on the digital data obtained as a result of such use. Digital sociology has a much broader meaning than the study of digital technologies, raising questions about the practice of sociology and social research. It also includes the study of how sociologists themselves use social and other digital media in their professional activities.