Sociology beyond computation? Alternative ways of researching digital life

It has been over 15 years since Savage and Burrows published their influential article about the crisis of empirical sociology. In the meantime, many authors have talked about how the rise of data science weakens the credibility of sociology and its mandate to produce knowledge about social realities in general, and emergent social phenomena in particular. Against that background, the mainstream methodological response from the social sciences has been to explore the bridges between sociology and data science. However, I contend this ongoing effort is marked by significant yet often underestimated epistemological, ethical, and political incongruities. Closing the methodological gap between sociology and computation comes at a cost, especially for the discipline placed in a subordinate position in the production of knowledge. That is why there is an urgent need to explicitly articulate and encourage a wider politically aware agenda for human-driven methods in digital sociology.