Noortje Marres (forthcoming, March 2017) Digital Sociology: The reinvention of social research. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Abstract

In Digital Sociology Noortje Marres invites us to ponder over the impact of social media research on sociology and over how sociology is transformed by digital research methods. She does this by opening up a conversation with classic voices in sociology, Durkheim, Weber, Garfinkel, and others, whereby she off ers insights into some of the methodological roots of digital methods. The book is guided by a desire to explore and clarify what research, with and against digital infrastruc-tures might mean for contemporary sociology, media studies and STS. One of the central tenets is that innovation in big data and computational social science needs sociology's capacity for methodological innovation. In the book, digitized social research is exemplified through cases and research conducted by Marres and colleagues over the past 5-8 years. Descriptions of to teaching situations and workshops off er lightness and liveliness to the theoretical argument. Only little is presented with regards to specifi cation on how to design or carry out digitized social inquiry. Still, Digital Sociology comes across as a practical book, which is quite an achievement given its theoretical ambition.