A passenger uses a smartphone  to buy a gift at a high-speed railway station. (PEOPLE’S DAILY ONLINE)

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As internet technology rapidly advances, interdisciplinary studies on the relationship between the internet and society have become a new frontier of social sciences in the information age. Scholars are paying increasing attention to cyber-sociology as the internet plays an increasingly important role in social issues.

Cyber-sociology is an emerging branch of sociology which focuses on rules relating to society in the internet age.

Gui Yong, a professor of sociology from Fudan University, said that sociology, as a practical discipline focused on social issues, should pay attention to the influence of the internet as it shows deeper and increasingly comprehensive influence on global politics, the economy, society and culture. The internet, on the one hand, brings new social issues and existing communities into virtual spaces. On the other hand, traditional forms of society, association and community are virtualized, he said. All these highlight the necessity of studies on cyber-sociology, he added.

Information technology is profoundly changing the ways in which culture develops and relates to itself, said Hu Jianguo, a professor from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Beijing University of Technology. Information technology is becoming one of the major factors affecting the power of dominance and changes in society, he said.

Tang Kuiyu, a professor of sociology from the Harbin Institute of Technology, suggests that studies of cyber-sociology aim to address challenges from online society. It can help develop theories about online society and macroscopic theories about contemporary society as well as summarize and record the daily and cultural practices in the perceptual world on the internet, he said. In addition, it can also help explore methods of analyzing and tackling the issues in online society, he added.

The emerging information technology ecosystem has profoundly changed the division of labor in human society. The change of the structure of social power, fortune and educational resources is one of the major realities that studies of cyber-sociology faces. Hu said that cyber sociological studies in recent years have paid increasing attention to the structure, conflict, culture and governance of cyber society as well as its relationship with the nation. However, reaching a consensus on the theories and methodologies of cyber sociological studies is one of the most urgent tasks in the development of this discipline, he said.

Tang suggests that the current studies of cyber-sociology should address the following problems. First, the core concepts such as online society, virtual space, cyber fields and the logic of online society should be defined and well clarified. Second, the subject, domain and boundaries of cyber-sociology should be defined and clarified. In addition, Tang advises the use of socio-anthropological methods in describing and documenting the evolution of online society and the history of virtual daily life. Chinese scholars should establish cyber-sociological theories, either macroscopic, intermediate or microscopic, in the context of the Chinese internet. In the future, groups of young scholars with a sense of social responsibility and innovation might emerge, he suggests.

Cyber-sociology is facing a great opportunity. Hu stresses that tackling the relationship between academic studies and policy-oriented studies. The clash between information technology and the order of modern society brings about lots of social problems, which demands studies that give advice to policymakers, he said. However, policy-oriented research should emphasize scientific rules and be guided by proper theories, he added. In addition, Hu emphasizes that this new discipline may absorb something valuable from other disciplines to improve its own theoretical system and methodology when tackling the relationship between it and other relevant disciplines.

Scholars of cyber-sociology should be equipped with the basic abilities of collecting, processing and analyzing new data. Gui suggests that cyber-sociology as a new paradigm of research should develop a system of assessment of sociology on the basis of traditional sociology.

Tang suggest Chinese scholars of cyber-sociology should pay more attention to the problems facing individuals, communities and society. Under this premise, efforts can also be devoted to issues concerning ontology, axiology and theories of practice as well as personal interests of the scholars, the needs the community and the national interests.

 

(edited by CHEN ALONG)