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The emergence of the internet and worldwide web presents new opportunities and challenges for sociologists. One opportunity is simply gaining access to an unrivalled range of information from across the globe with just a few clicks. The internet has become an invaluable research tool that can be used to gain access to articles, books, research reports, government documents, parliamentary debates (live or in document form), historical documents, archives and lots, lots more. In this way, academic exchanges are speeded up and local research reaches the international scholarly community with ease. As Selwyn (2019: vi) notes, ‘This abundance of online information reflects the fast-changing nature of scholarship and knowledge.’

There is a danger that this accessibility of information may be mistaken for accuracy of information. Students and researchers have to be constantly critical and ask the same questions they would of all other sources. Who produced it? How was it produced? Has it been subject to review by other academics? How credible is the source? Does the source have any direct interest in the information that might lead to bias? Many lecturers are engaged in teaching students the skills required to be able to make effective use of online sources (Ó Dochartaigh 2009). Researchers can use apps, email, Skype, online questionnaires and webcam interviews as part of their research projects, while the huge number of online communities offers the possibility of doing research in much the same way as would happen in conventional social groups and communities (Hewson et al. 2002). Chatrooms, forums and other social media are used by specific interest groups to organize online and as a result may present the best or only way into a particular subject.

The rapid spread of digital technologies has stimulated debates about how the practice of sociology is affected in the digital age, and these debates are part of the recent sub-field known as digital sociology. Digital devices and technologies have become embedded in people’s ordinary lifestyles, as they engage with online news feeds, banking, social media, search engines, gaming, video streaming and much more. Alongside these are smart TVs, refrigerators and white goods, home lighting and electronics, sensors and programmers, which collectively have come to be labelled the emerging ‘Internet of Things’. All of which means that social life has become ‘profoundly digital and digitized’ and is lived in and through digital systems (Selwyn 2019: 2). One key development is that, through digitization, very large quantities of data are now routinely collected, including text messages and call records, search engine selections, and credit card transactions, along with GPS location data, which records not only what people do but where they do it.

For some, this mass of digital data allows sociologists to find out much more about social life and social relations than ever before and to avoid the charge that sociology is out of touch with the new reality (Marres 2017). And, rather than relying on data generated via the somewhat artificial methods of surveys, interviews and focus groups, digital data are said to be ‘naturally occurring’, part of the millions of interactions and exchanges between people as they go about their daily lives. Savage and Burrows (2007) argue that exploring this data allows sociologists to move towards describing the complexities of social life in fine-grained detail as never before, perhaps marking a new way of doing sociology.

However, digitization also opens up the potential for interventions in social life to bring about change. Marres (2017: 7–10) reports on one such example, that of the Samaritan Radar, a social media app developed to try to identify social media users who may be at risk of suicide. The app enabled real-time monitoring and analysis of Twitter messages, alerting followers of those thought to be at risk and offering advice on how they should provide support. Such interventionist potential could suggest that the longrejected nineteenth-century positivist ideal of science being able to predict and shape human behaviour may make a digital-age return. But, before we run away with this idea, it is important to rehearse some criticisms of the recent digital turn in sociology.

First, it is not correct to suggest that sociology has only very recently come to see digital methods as potentially useful. Computing has been a staple of sociological analysis since at least the 1960s, as anyone who has used the standard software packages SPSS and NVivo, for quantitative and qualitative analysis respectively, will attest. The novelty of digital technology as research tools should not be overstated. On the other hand, digitization is clearly influencing conventional methods, even fieldwork, some of which can be conducted online with particular groups.

Second, the claim that digital data are ‘naturally occurring’ has been challenged. The algorithms used by major search engines, such as Google, are created by company workers, and digital data are the products of human activity. Lupton (2015: 8) argues that ‘Human judgement steps in at each stage of the production of data: in deciding what constitutes data; what data are important to collect and aggregate; how they should be classified and organized into hierarchies; whether they are “clean” or “dirty” …; and so on.’ Similarly, rather than being just ‘raw data’ waiting to be analysed, digital data are just as likely to tell us something about the devices and systems involved as they do about the behaviour of people who use them. Marres (2017: 22) says that, ‘if a particular app is frequently downloaded by a particular group of users, does that tell us something about those users, or does it rather tell us something about the auto-suggest and rankings of apps on the platforms they use?’ Hence, we should be cautious about the uncritical use of digital data in social research.

Third, digital sociology, like all sociological research, is likely to raise ethical issues of confidentiality, privacy and the legitimate collection and use of data. The Samaritan Radar app is one example. The app was shut down following criticism that, in informing followers without the consent of the account holder, it risked stigmatizing people and constituted an invasion of privacy. Yet the very concept of privacy may need to be rethought, given the ubiquity of sharing within social media and widespread dataveillance – the systematic monitoring and use of data relating to people’s online activity. A survey by the Wellcome Trust (2013) in the UK suggests that people were broadly positive towards monitoring and use of online data in government crime-prevention work, for reasons of national security and in improving government services, but concerns were expressed about data theft, hacking, targeted advertising and possible invasions of privacy. Given that online research can be conducted anonymously and without any face-to-face contact, it may be that issues of privacy, confidentiality and risk will need to be reconsidered by the bodies that govern research practice in professional sociology.

The sub-field of digital sociology is very recent, with its origins under this label being traceable to early work from 2009 and 2010. And though research in this field continues apace, foundational issues around what it should cover and what methods are appropriate to it also currently remain unresolved. Are existing research methods capable of understanding social life today, or should sociologists use digital technologies to develop novel methods that are better able to tell us about social life in the digital age? The answer to this question has implications not just for digital sociology but for the future practice of sociology as such.