The edited volume aims to present a critical analysis of the current state of research on religion and belief systems in the realm of the ‘Digital Social’. The rapid expansion and democratization of digital technologies in conjunction with the significant shifts taking place within the practices of religion and belief through digital technology demand a critical examination across the social sciences and humanities. These changes call for an overview of not only our current methodological tool box but also the epistemological and ethical considerations that researchers must contend with. The proposed volume provides a critical framework that recognizes that the social, and therefore the religious, cannot be fully understood without recognizing how the digital world actively constitutes notions such as identity, social networks, embodiment, and social institutions. While some specific methods will be discussed, the volume’s emphasis remains on the critical epistemological and logistical considerations that are needed when undertaking this form of research.

The world is ever changing and the way students experience social studies should reflect the environment in which they live and learn. Digital Social Studies explores research, effective teaching strategies, and technologies for social studies practice in the digital age. The digital age of education is more prominent than ever and it is an appropriate time to examine the blending of the digital age and the field of social studies. What is digital social studies? Why do we need it and what is its purpose? What will social studies look like in the future? The contributing authors of this volume seek to explain, through an array of ideas and visions, what digital social studies can/should look like, while providing research and rationales for why digital social studies is needed and important. This volume includes twenty-two scholarly chapters discussing relevant topics of importance to digital social studies. The twenty-two chapters are divided into two sections. This stellar collection of writings includes contributions from leading scholars like Cheryl Mason Bolick, Michael Berson, Elizabeth Washington, Linda Bennett, and many more.

The edited volume aims to present a critical analysis of the current state of research on religion and belief systems in the realm of the ‘Digital Social’. The rapid expansion and democratization of digital technologies in conjunction with the significant shifts taking place within the practices of religion and belief through digital technology demand a critical examination across the social sciences and humanities. These changes call for an overview of not only our current methodological tool box but also the epistemological and ethical considerations that researchers must contend with. The proposed volume provides a critical framework that recognizes that the social, and therefore the religious, cannot be fully understood without recognizing how the digital world actively constitutes notions such as identity, social networks, embodiment, and social institutions. While some specific methods will be discussed, the volume’s emphasis remains on the critical epistemological and logistical considerations that are needed when undertaking this form of research.

The digital, in the form of technologies, scenarios, objects, processes, and relational and interactional structures, is increasingly becoming central to understanding culture, society, human experience, and the social world. It permeates our society’s practices, symbols, and shared meanings, and it makes old distinctions, such as the one between online and offline, real and virtual, and material and immaterial, obsolete. It also introduces digitally native objects of research, such as cyber-bullying and digital identities, which have a direct impact on mainstream sociological problems.

In a digitally powered society, social workers are frequently challenged to embrace new interventions and enhance existing strategies in order to effectively promote social justice. The cases in this volume present engaging examples of technology tools in use across micro, mezzo, and macro practice, thereby illuminating the knowledge, skills, and values required of those who practice social work 2.0.

To analyse social and behavioural phenomena in our digitalized world, it is necessary to understand the main research opportunities and challenges specific to online and digital data. This book presents an overview of the many techniques that are part of the fundamental toolbox of the digital social scientist. Placing online methods within the wider tradition of social research, Giuseppe Veltri discusses the principles and frameworks that underlie each technique of digital research. This practical guide covers methodological issues such as dealing with different types of digital data, construct validity, representativeness and big data sampling. It looks at different forms of unobtrusive data collection methods (such as web scraping and social media mining) as well as obtrusive methods (including qualitative methods, web surveys and experiments). Special extended attention is given to computational approaches to statistical analysis, text mining and network analysis. Digital Social Research will be a welcome resource for students and researchers across the social sciences and humanities carrying out digital research (or interested in the future of social research).

This book engages the reader in exploring the relationships between digital social innovation initiatives and the city. It delivers a fresh, accessible and case-based discussion on the emergence of digitally-enabled social innovation practices in Europe that are redesigning the urban space and challenging the consolidated urban governance processes. By adopting a critical geography perspective, this ground-breaking analysis of digital social innovation provides the reader with an accessible overview of the way in which urban reproductive processes mobilise the physical and the virtual dimensions of the city and generate distinctive spatial configurations. Together with novel urban narratives and socio-technical imaginaries, these support the existing geometries of power or construct new ones. The author clearly describes contemporary cities as the new battlegrounds for controlling the digital sphere, shaped by the interplay between digital capitalism and resistance movements. In light of grassroots initiatives advanced by cyber-activists, e-makers and hackers, the book unveils the socio-political and cultural underpinnings of the revolution produced by the digital social innovations in the city and the socio-technological regimes supporting them. This author successfully sheds new critical light on traditional innovation studies exploring the debate on digital innovation through the lens of social and cultural geography providing an invaluable reference for those working in this field.