Datenwissenschaften und Gesellschaft

Abstract

Die Digitalisierung der Gesellschaft eröffnet neue soziologische Forschungsfelder, beeinflusst aber auch klassische Phänomene wie Infrastrukturen, Vergemeinschaftungen und soziale Praktiken grundlegend. Die Reihe Digitale Soziologie bietet sowohl theoretisch-konzeptionellen als auch empirischen Untersuchungen hierzu eine gemeinsame editorische Plattform. Insbesondere versammelt sie Arbeiten, die neue, auch unorthodoxe Zugriffe auf substanzielle Fragestellungen der Soziologie anbieten, die aktuelle methodische und konzeptionelle Entwicklungen aufgreifen oder innovative Methodenkombinationen nutzen. Dabei legt sie besonderen Wert auf die Diskussion der Rolle der Soziologie angesichts der digitalisierten Gesellschaft und auf die Reflexion der daraus folgenden Implikationen bspw. für Infrastrukturen und die wissenschaftliche Praxis. Die Reihe schließt deutsch-und englischsprachige Monografien und Sammelbände ebenso ein wie herausragende Qualifikationsarbeiten. Die Reihe wird herausgegeben von Roger Häußling, Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda, Sophie Mützel, Jan-Hendrik Passoth und Andreas Schmitz. Bei Interesse an der Publikation in dieser Reihe können die Herausgeber*innen kontaktiert werden.

A Tamed Transformation. Debating Digitalisation in Research and Higher Education Policy in Switzerland, 1998–2020

“…In this respect, the strategies of federal policy makers contribute to the stabilisation of such fields of knowledge, which in turn create incentives for other actors, especially economic and academic actors, to also become active in these areas. The statements, measures and investments of actors in HER policy thus have foundational effects in the spaces between the fields of politics, science and economics in which such arrangements emerge and develop (Eyal 2013b;Saner 2022).…”

“…In this sense, discursive fields represent promising spaces of opportunities (Eyal 2013b;Saner 2022).…”

Introduction to the Special Issue: Digital Academia. Investigating Science and Higher Education in the Digital Age

“…As our examples and the contributions to this special issue show, actors in universities and disciplines succeed in institutionalizing new fields when they manage to establish concepts that are broad enough to include actors from inside and outside their organizations or research communities. Thus, participants in these spaces do not necessarily need to share a common understanding, but rather need to be committed to the institutionalization of such new forms and activities (Tratschin 2021;Saner 2022).…”

“…These new fields combine disciplinary knowledge, theories, and expertise with new methods of data collection, storage, and analysis, mainly from statistics and computer science, a process through which the digitalization of scientific research in the second half of the 20 th century facilitated. Several recent studies emphasize the role of boundaries and boundary work in the emergence of these fields, for example, for the data sciences (Saner 2022; Prietl and Raible, this issue) and the digital humanities (Klein 2015; Piotrowski and Kemman, this issue). Boundary work describes the symbolic and social demarcation of boundaries (Lamont and Molnár 2002) between scientific and non-scientific fields as well as within scientific disciplines and professions (Gieryn 1983;1999;Klein 2015).…”

“…Such new fields are often undetermined or underdefined (Piotrowski and Kemman, this issue) and therefore, they offer promising "space[s] of opportunities" (Eyal 2013, 177;Saner 2022) for various actors across social fields and scientific disciplines. Their institutionalization relies on building networks across scientific disciplines and academia to generate media attention, research funding, and demand from non-scientific employers.…”