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Digital Sociology: Emergent Technologies in
the Field and the Classroom
Jonathan R. Wynn
1
In this essay, I use my own research experiences to address a critical intersection between
technology and sociology. I suggest that thinking reflexively about technology might enhance
both how sociologists do research and how they teach about it.
KEY WORDS: media; pedagogy; research methods; technology; visual sociology.
INTRODUCTION
Technology has altered the everyday lives and experiences of students
and faculty, both in and out of the classroom. My own academic journey
into using emergent technologies began at two different points, culminat-
ing in a new focus on the relationship between media and technology and
our discipline. I would like to share those two moments as entry into this
short essay.
I first began thinking about media and technology (M&T) while con-
ducting research on urban walking tour guides. I used a digital recording
device for interviews (lamentably and predictably, a near-obsolete Sony
Mini-Disk Recorder), and as I dutifully transcribed each story, I began to
wonder why I was re-presenting stories that were told pretty well in the
first place and why I was sapping the color from the context, as I trans-
ferred it to 12-point black font. Anyone who has done transcription work
knows that it makes one meditate on his or her research, and as I focused
on the traffic in the background while I asked questions about public his-
tory, or the cafe
´din as a guide told me a story about how poorly she
responded to an older man challenging her authority on a tour, I felt the
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205 Pierce Hall, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts 01060; e-mail: jwynn@
email.smith.edu.
Sociological Forum, Vol. 24, No. 2, June 2009 (2009)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1573-7861.2009.01109.x
448
0884-8971/09/0300-0031/0 2009 Eastern Sociological Society
vitality and ‘‘lived experience’’ of the interviews drain away. My research
had led me to believe that walking tours were curious intellectual exercises
because they match physical experiences with scholarly learning in a lived
context, and yet here I was: decontextualizing their stories and lives
through scholarly practices. From there, I began to think about using
technology to better evoke that social world.
The second experience that led to my reflexivity regarding techno-
logy was with the job I held while writing my dissertation: Instructional
Technology Fellow (ITF) at the City University of New York’s Honors
College. CUNY began the Honors College in an attempt to create a
unique liberal arts education within the citywide system. These students
took a series of seminars, each with an emphasis on using technology as
a pedagogical tool. Every student was given a new, Macintosh laptop,
and access to a group of ITFs—including me—who were trained to be a
kind of ‘‘Tech TA.’’ Working with Nancy Foner’s ‘‘The Peopling of
New York City’’ seminar, for example, we worked on creating a web-
page on East Harlem. Students were assigned roles: Project Coordina-
tors, HTML Editors, Designers, Photo and Text Editors, and Site
Architects. Collectively, each class was given a particular neighborhood,
and conducted empirical and historical research, and then developed a
website that included multimedia representations of their work. (Some
Honors College web projects can be seen at http://www.nytimes.com/ref/
college/coll_cunysites.html.)
It was, then, from both a methodological and pedagogical point of
view that I came to be thinking about media and technology and socio-
logy. I’ll address the issues I have faced in both before leading to what I
see as the next stage of our disciplinary concerns: training our students
to be reflexive about technology. Inevitably, some readers will find this
discussion remedial, and to others I might as well be speaking in a
foreign tongue. Similarly, some will experiment with new technologies;
others will prefer familiar ones. For example: I visited a graduate
seminar recently and the professor used transparencies and an overhead
projector. It was an incredibly effective class, and a good reminder that
older technologies do not need to be tossed aside for the next shiny tool.
Transparencies are an instructional technology, after all, and we must
contemplate the effectiveness, purpose, and benefits of technologies, new
and old. Although a broad overview of the costs and benefits of M&T
is beyond the scope of this brief discussion, I would like to raise some
issues I’ve encountered, and share how new technologies have enhanced
my work in the field, in the classroom, and in my disposition to socio-
logy as a discipline.
Emergent Technologies in the Field and Classroom 449
THE OPTION OF DIGITAL DATA, AND AN
‘‘AUDIO SOCIOLOGY’’
Howard Becker characterizes the reception of new technologies by
the sociological mainstream as a chilly one, describing how the use of
technology has been labeled as ‘‘unscientific’’; a characterization that is, in
his opinion, ‘‘odd, since the natural sciences routinely use visual materi-
als’’ (1995:7). Anthropology, meanwhile, is far ahead of sociology in con-
templating ‘‘the visual’’ beyond statistical images and mapping. Philippe
Bourgois, for example, has paired up with ethnographer ⁄photographer
Jeff Schonberg to examine Bay Area homeless (2007). Those who are
more ethnographically inclined should, theoretically, be leading in this
regard, as they tend to privilege the in situ experiences of respondents.
Without addressing the potentiality of a mediated methodology, Jack
Katz nonetheless establishes the warrants of such an M&T-infused eth-
nography, stating that ethnography gives the reader a ‘‘you are there’’
sense of immediacy and provides vivid descriptions, as well as develops
the deeper understandings of the ‘‘obdurate edge of local environments’’
(2002:71). Visual and audio technology in this light can provide new kinds
of field notes, for those who are so inclined.
Using photography, Douglas Harper has been an ‘‘early adopter’’ by
using visual evidence in his studies of migrant workers and agricultural
labor (1982, 2001). More recently, Mitchell Duneier’s Sidewalk (1999) and
Wacquant’s Body and Soul (2006) follow suit, and Sudhir Venkatesh,
Michael Burawoy, and Duneier have embarked on making documentary
films (see Venkatesh, 2009). As another example, Greg Scott—even in the
rough cut of his documentary film he provides on his webpage—gives the
viewer a sense of the scene in his project on ‘‘The Brickyard,’’ a construc-
tion site occupied by a large group of homeless. He puts faces in the con-
text of place. As a result of such epistemological advances, many scholars
are confronting the tradition of anonymous sources, and ‘‘real faces’’ and
‘‘real places’’ are emerging from the literature (Duneier, 1999; Marwell,
2007). ‘‘Visual sociology’’ develops new avenues to evoke lived experience
and augment a sociologist’s own storytelling abilities.
As compared to the visual, the use of audio is rare in sociology,
despite the fact that storytelling plays such an important part in ethno-
graphic work (Auyero, 2003; Myerhoff, 1980). Now that small digital
recording devices have become incredibly cheap, and with the iPod and
iPhone (yes, I now record interviews on my phone, using the download-
able application, ‘‘iTalk’’) and new software, audio media is at its most
accessible for both consumption in the form of thousands of ‘‘podcasts’’
(audio and video broadcasts that are available for subscription and
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download) and in production. It is now quite easy for researchers to edit
and broadcast their stories, setting the stage for an ‘‘audio sociology’’ to
match the rise of a ‘‘visual sociology.’’
When studying storytellers, I asked myself, why not use their own
voices, told in their own styles and mannerisms? In my own research on
walking guides, I changed the wording of my human subjects submission
to include a caveat on digital recording, stating I would use those record-
ings—rather than destroying after research is complete, as some IRBs
demand—in the presentation of my work. As an ethnographic researcher,
I was profoundly interested in the storytelling of my respondents, and as
an unabashed fan of NPR’s This American Life—with Ira Glass’s wry nar-
ration and funky music punctuating the three or four stories oriented
around a weekly theme—I set to making a one-hour ‘‘show’’ from my
interviews. Once my data were collected, I began an integrated process
of transcription and analysis. Apple’s proprietary software program,
‘‘Garageband,’’ allows users to pick and choose samples of drum beats,
guitar riffs, and orchestral ‘‘hits’’ and piece together a song, bar by bar. I
used this program to manipulate my audio interviews, find and define cat-
egories, map codes of research, decontextualize and recontextualize data
to create dense webs of connections, and piece together ‘‘if ⁄then’’ lists and
sets of contrary evidence. (There is a similar ‘‘freeware’’ program called
‘‘Audacity’’ that can perform similar tasks.) Through this process, I
assembled interview material from more than 60 hours of interviews and
arranged them into seven tracks, organized around particular issues (e.g.,
‘‘On Entertainment and Education,’’ ‘‘On Affect,’’ ‘‘On Putting Together
a Tour’’) for about an hour of content I could then burn on CD, post
online, or use for presentations.
My academic presentations have changed dramatically. Because I had
collected my data digitally, I realized how easy it was to incorporate my
respondents’ voices into my presentations. Although I used to avoid Pow-
erPoint (PP), preferring to read from a script, the program has become
my central medium for using audio at conferences and in class lectures.
The benefits are great. One of the more deadening aspects of PP presenta-
tions, for example, has been the ‘‘Reading a Respondent’s Quote Word
for Word While the Quote is Projected Behind You’’ trick. I have found
that using audio clips not only avoids this awkwardness but also creates
a polyvocality within a presentation and evokes a social scene for an
audience.
In this larger sense, it is important to stress the demands placed on,
and expectations of, those who are on the receiving end of a presentation
that uses digital data. By using audio data, the listener is expected to
‘‘fill in’’ much of the context, similar to the experience of listening to the
Emergent Technologies in the Field and Classroom 451
radio: the listener must imagine the respondents, their interactions, and
their mannerisms. The presentation of visual media, on the other hand,
allows the viewer to be a more passive consumer of the information.
Audio technologies are relatively lower in data; visual technologies are
thick with description and are high in definition. Using Marshall McLu-
han’s framework, a more visual sociology is relatively ‘‘hot media’’ and
audio sociology is a ‘‘cooler media’’ (1964:22–23). I have, so far, preferred
the ‘‘cooler’’ media. And if interested in examples, I encourage you to visit
the Contexts Magazine website to check out some sociology podcasts
(http://contexts.org/podcast/).
The choice between audio and visual data should be a conscious one,
but whatever you decide, I can offer a few words of advice, applicable to
both ‘‘hotter’’ and ‘‘cooler’’ media. First, I usually keep additional sound
clips on hand: shorter versions if I am running out of time, and a few
extra ones in anticipation of audience questions. There is one story, for
example, of a guide who, for particular tour groups, presents herself as
having a false ethnic heritage. It takes a little too long to set up within a
15–20-minute presentation, but if there is a question about identity forma-
tion or the pressures of ethnic fantasies of tourists, I am able to provide
this story as part of my answer. Second, you can use the ‘‘performance’’
time to your advantage: to gather your thoughts, judge your timing, and
take note of something you forgot instead of awkwardly standing in
silence, head bowed to the floor while an audio or video track is playing.
Third—and this should go without saying—technology goes awry: always
have a backup plan, and a backup to the backup. (I have had to go
with the third of four options for a talk when my attempts to use the
technology failed.)
THE FUNCTION OF M&T IN AND OUT OF THE CLASSROOM
There is a growing literature on instructional technology, and I have
heard and read many fears over the increasing ‘‘edutainment’’ of the class-
room experience. I find this meme to overemphasize the presentation of
information, and devalue the potential benefits M&T can bring to course
content and classroom interactivity. My experiences at CUNY informed
my own teaching, pushing me to include instructional technology in order
to augment my interactions with students, particularly instigating a more
engaged discussion. I have, for example, found teaching sociological the-
ory requires a little more ‘‘frontloading’’ of information, and class time is
never enough. So, for my ‘‘Foundations of Social Theory’’ course I came
up with a schedule to manage students’ study time outside the classroom
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by using a Wiki on our course website. (Wikis are programs that are con-
tributed to, and edited by, an entire group. At Smith we use Moodle, but
BlackBoard has a similar feature and MediaWiki offers a free version of
software.)
It was a Tuesday ⁄Thursday course, and I used this schedule to cre-
ate a week-long progression. The cycle would began at the end of class
on Thursday, when I gave a few orienting ideas for students to keep in
mind, or a little background prior to their weekend readings. On Sunday
night, a group of three students was assigned to post a few key ideas,
concepts, and questions they had on the readings and ⁄or link to other
materials on the web, on the class Wiki. All students then have an
opportunity to ask questions, and challenge the ideas presented in the
Wiki by posting comments and concerns. I would preview these online
discussions and shape my Tuesday lectures to directly address the issues
raised on the Wiki. With this information, students write a one-page
assignment of ‘‘speaking notes’’ (a short essay to identify central ideas in
the readings, reflect on them, and then connect them with other read-
ings) for Thursday. Armed to the teeth with multiple sources, and with
their speaking notes in hand, Thursday’s class was open for (a hopefully
rich) discussion. At the end of that second class, the cycle would start
again.
Such a progression serves multiple purposes. First, it positions
the students’ ‘‘first contact’’ with course content outside the classroom.
Second, it permits me to gauge their comprehension of the readings while
preparing my lectures before class. Third, I can easily assess online work
as a portion of students’ class participation credit. Fourth, and related,
students who are less comfortable talking in class are able to participate
in the virtual dialogue, which allows me to have a broader view of stu-
dents’ abilities. (I have found some students who were paralyzed while
speaking in class would open up on the Wiki and, conversely, those stu-
dents who were technophobic could still earn participation credit in class.)
As a result, I found this system profoundly affected the tone of the course:
students were more involved, having a greater stake in the outcome of our
discussions. They evaluated the experience positively. According to one
student’s evaluation: ‘‘The Wiki was confusing, but it grows on you …I
liked the approach!’’ Another wrote: ‘‘I loved the speaking note format
and the Wiki, rather than big papers. It still let me learn and examine
ideas, but with less stress.’’ The Wiki made some feel their ideas were
being ‘‘nurtured’’ and wanted more Wiki work, and one or two expressed
anxiety over how that work was being evaluated. As with any classroom
innovation, it is important to be clear, particularly among a grade-
conscious population.
Emergent Technologies in the Field and Classroom 453
There are many ‘‘emergent technologies’’ I do not use, but they still
float on my horizon. ‘‘Clickers’’ (a small, wireless keypad given to stu-
dents so that they can answer an instructor’s questions in real time) and
Smartboards (touch-sensitive, interactive electronic whiteboards) are
increasingly common in the ‘‘harder’’ sciences. Blogging can provide fac-
ulty a venue for class reflection and commentary and Apple’s ‘‘iTunesU’’
is a platform that allows teachers to record and broadcast their lectures
every week so that students can download them later by using a presenta-
tion recording program, for example, ‘‘Echo 360’’ (e.g., MIT and Berkeley
have large iTunesU lecture databases). In my experience, blogging has
been little more than an online storehouse for links, and I am wary of
recording class lectures, although I have made other people’s iTunesU lec-
tures out-of-class assignments and-or ‘‘recommended readings.’’
MEDIA, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIOLOGY
At Smith College, I teach a class called ‘‘Media, Technology, and
Sociology.’’ It is a three-level hybrid course designed to teach students: (1)
critical analysis of M&T, (2) how sociology as a discipline uses and mis-
uses M&T, and (3) how to use the technology itself. It is rich and messy.
We use Paul Starr’s Creation of the Media and parts of Eric Klinenberg’s
Fighting for Air to learn about the rise of media and contemporary strug-
gles within it, and we read Lawrence Lessig’s excellent book on copyright,
Free Culture, as well (which is appropriately and freely available online).
Howard Becker’s Telling About Society, however, was true inspiration; it
is a book that prods sociologists to be more reflexive about the craft by
analyzing a variety of plays, film, mapping, fiction, and photography.
Inspired by Becker, I wanted to create something between a ‘‘substan-
tive’’ and ‘‘methods’’ course. Not every undergraduate will end up a socio-
logist, but I wanted students to think critically about the technologies
they use every day, and how they can better manipulate these technologies
to serve their own scholarly needs, whatever they may be. I discuss my
own experiences using digital audio, and offer tutorials on YouTube,
Second Life, and digital photography as well. Offering hands-on lessons
has generated mostly positive evaluations from students who ‘‘would have
liked it if the professor had spent more time on this,’’ but at least one stu-
dent found my technology tutorials to be ‘‘kind of a waste of time.’’
Over the course of the semester I learned to be comfortable with stu-
dents knowing more than me. I made ‘‘Look What Grandpa Found on
the Internet’’ a regular feature of my lectures, wherein we discuss some-
thing I knew students had mastered long before I knew it existed.
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Nowhere was the gap between us more apparent than with social
networking sites, which I had, until recently, studiously avoided. When I
joined Facebook, I warily accepted a few students as ‘‘friends,’’ quickly
learning about the ways users are able to maintain dozens, even hundreds,
of ‘‘peripheral’’ relationships. I began to be the recipient of every broad-
cast of their ‘‘status updates’’ and picture uploads. Their academic mis-
sives were surprising at times (e.g., ‘‘Joanne doesn’t even care about
grades at this point, she just wants to get it over with’’ and ‘‘Karen is con-
vinced her advisor doesn’t read her papers!’’), but seeing a student’s new
tattoo location via Facebook compelled me to make, at minimum, a ‘‘no
current students’’ rule. My jury is still out on ‘‘Facebooking’’ with stu-
dents altogether, and I contemplate the increasing porosity of the barrier
between faculty and student every time I log in (e.g., Do I jeopardize the
student-teacher relationship when I don’t ‘‘accept’’ them as friends? Do I
jeopardize that trust when I do accept them?).
THE CHALLENGES AND FUTURES OF A SHIFT TO
DIGITAL SOCIOLOGY
There are a series of challenges that come with the rise of new
technologies, only some of which can be hinted at here. Anonymity and
confidentiality of respondents is significantly challenged by the use of
M&T, for example. Regarding teaching, the blurred boundaries between
faculty and students is at once liberating and disconcerting. What about
publishing findings in online venues? These issues indicate that the disci-
pline needs to have a broad discussion on the effects of M&T, and how
we evaluate scholarly labor. There is, for example, the potential for an
inequality between the ‘‘haves’’ and the ‘‘have nots’’ when it comes to
M&T usage. This gap corresponds with the ‘‘second digital divide’’:
beyond access, there is growing inequality between those who know how
to use technology for their own gains (Attewell, 2001), and so, too, might
there be a gap between the higher education faculty who use M&T in the
classroom and in research, and those who do not. There is still little
emphasis on the use of M&T in regard to those who calculate the value
of our academic endeavors, so it is unlikely a ‘‘Blog or Perish’’ policy will
be taken up any time soon. So for now, and despite the interest of
students and perhaps a general public, these endeavors may amount to
little more than a curious, difficult-to-assess scholarly hobby, recalling the
debates over the academic value of a more ‘‘public sociology’’ (Burawoy,
2004; Deflem, 2004). (If interested, take a look at the popular sociology
blog, Scatterplot, for discussions on this.)
Emergent Technologies in the Field and Classroom 455
There are limitations and downsides, but by highlighting my own
experiences, I hope to draw attention to some of the benefits: how M&T
can evoke one’s research site (i.e., by using video and audio to present
data), how it can improve student engagement in class content (i.e., by
establishing first contact with content out of the classroom, by better
assessing student capabilities), and how student work can be configured to
be more active (i.e., by getting students to use M&T to investigate the
social world). I still hope for an ‘‘Audio Sociology,’’ not out of a sense of
‘‘NPR-nostalgia,’’ but because I strongly believe that it is easily accessible
for the scholar and the listener, and that it requires an element of the
listener’s participation with ‘‘cooler’’ media. We’ll just have to see what
happens. Or hear.
REFERENCES
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74: 3: 252–259.
Auyero, J. 2003. Contentious Lives. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
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It’s (Almost) All a Matter of Context,’’ Visual Sociology 10: 1 ⁄2: 5–14.
Becker, H. S. 2007. Telling About Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Bourgois, P., and J. Schonberg. 2007. ‘‘Intimate Apartheid: Ethnic Dimensions of Habitus
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Deflem, M. 2004. ‘‘Letter to the Editor (The Proper Role of Sociology in the World
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Ethnography (Part 2),’’ Ethnography 3: 1: 63–90.
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