Davide Bennato – Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche, Università di Catania
Abstract
The abundance of data in actual society have created a new kind of infrastructure permeating every aspects of the social lives of people. Digital platforms, social media, government databases are social and political tools, not only a new way to make digital approach useful to the society. The aim of the talk is to introduce in which way we can consider this infrastructure important for the sociological theory and research. We can recognize three different phases in the evolution of the relationship between digital data and social science. The first is the open data, a new way to dealing with the social and technological opportunities to use structured information coming from digital platforms. The second one is the big data: a real deluge of data creating a new environment important for a new approach in sociological research. The third one is the linked data: a step forward in autonomous technologies able to embed the social relationship. We will try to figure out in which way the social science community can use this technologies, and why we have to handle it with care because they are involved not only in a new way to study the society, ma also in a news way to describe the XXI century society in a powerful different way.