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Digital Societies
Researching the role of emerging technologies,
data and platforms in contemporary mediated
societies

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

Find Digital Societies online here:

https://www.surrey.ac.uk/department-
sociology/research/digital-societies

Find the Department of Sociology here:

https://www.surrey.ac.uk/department-sociology
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Contents

A Vision for Digital Societies ..........................................3

Wellbeing in Platform Societies .....................................4
Self-tracking, sleep and wellbeing ............................4
Mental health ...............................................................5
Health controversies ....................................................6
Life in Platform Societies .................................................8
The future of audiences in a datafied age .............8
Digitalization of the domestic ....................................9
Resourcing the data ecosystem ...............................9
The dark digital economy........................................ 11
Relationships in Platform Societies ............................ 13
Interpersonal ties and networked intimacies ....... 13
Youth sexting practices ............................................ 14
Online misogyny ........................................................ 16
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A Vision for Digital Societies

Amidst much hope and hype around data and the digital
in platform societies, Surrey Sociology’s new research group
Digital Societies brings together scholarship which puts
forward a nuanced and balanced approach to the digital,
data, and datafication in contemporary mediated
societies. We investigate the sociological and mediated
contexts of technology use and uptake, interrogating both
macro and micro-sociological workings of new waves of
socio-technological change. Our emphasis on the role of
emerging technologies, data and platforms in
contemporary mediated societies aligns itself with the
University of Surrey’s Research Priorities, the Faculty of Social
Sciences’ priorities, the University’s “Grand Challenges” and
the Research Themes the University is seeking to establish.
Research in the Digital Societies group is constantly
changing, reflecting the nature of digital mediation of
contemporary societies. We currently have projects running
in three cross-cutting strands, which we present in what
follows.
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Wellbeing in Platform Societies

Self-tracking, sleep and wellbeing

Rob Meadows and Chris Hine are working on sleep, social

media and self-tracking practices. Sleep is a moral matter,
from long-standing proverbs of the ‘early
to bed early to rise …’ kind to
contemporary ideas of ‘sleep
enhancement’ and moralising regarding
sleep medicines in lay and popular culture
today. Recent developments in digital and social media
add further important dimensions and dynamics to these
matters. These developments have the
potential to transform how we ‘know’
good and bad sleep; may come to be
embedded within new standards,
responsibilities and ideals to become a
better or more productive sleeper; and give rise to a future
of work where sleep data becomes wrapped up within
company health and wellbeing programmes. Their current
research is interested in the ethical challenges and
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opportunities that these technologies embody and

engender

Mental health

We have been researching both maternal and paternal

mental health in the context of social media use. Paul
Hodkinson and Ranjana Das have been
investigating the ways in which men, in
their roles as new fathers, communicate
and disclose mental health difficulties in
platform societies. They have found a
range of uses of platforms in this
regard, from full disclosure to complete disconnection, and
have identified ways in which
emotional distress is often coded subtly
online, using a range of platform
management strategies, in a process
they have called ‘affective coding’.
Against the backdrop of discussion on
how men struggle to communicate about mental health,
and some debate around the validity of using natality
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related terminology for men’s perinatal mental illnesses,

they hope to provide much-needed evidence on how
fathers cope with and communicate about their perinatal
struggles -and what role digital and social media
technologies play in the process.

Ranjana Das has been doing similar work on mediated

maternal anxiety, maternal interpersonal ties, and
discourses around childbirth online, which we discuss later.

Health controversies

Ranjana Das has worked on the use of social media

platforms in two recent high profile medical cases involving
controversies around so-called parental rights being
positioned against the rights of children, such as the Charlie
Gard case and the Alfie Evans case. She analysed the
rhetorical strategies mobilised by the
social media campaign around baby
Charlie Gard, to identify seven
classical markers of populism which
enabled rampant misunderstanding
of both law and science to rapidly
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reject and replace evidence-based debate

with heightened, emotive responses. Analysing the Alfie
Evans campaign she produced findings on the use of the
‘liveness’ feature of social media platforms, and the role of
trolling and disinformation, arguing cautiously for a role for
critical media literacy, without conceptualising it as an easy
cure-all.
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Life in Platform Societies

The future of audiences in a datafied age

Ranjana Das in collaboration with Brita Ytre-Arne of the

University of Bergen in Norway has directed a team of 29
researchers across Europe in an AHRC funded project on
the future of audiences in the face of
datafication and emerging
technologies. Their work, published as
the book The Future of Audiences
brings together contributions from
scholars across Europe to present
findings from a foresight analysis
exercise on audiences and audience
analysis, looking towards an increasingly datafied world
and anticipating the ubiquity of the internet of things. The
book uses knowledge emerging out of three foresight
exercises, produced in co-operation with more than 50
stake-holding organisations and building on systematic
reviews of audience research. It works through these
exercises to arrive at a renewed agenda for audience
studies within communication scholarship in the context of
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intrusive and connected interfaces and emerging

communicative practices.

Digitalization of the domestic

Tom Roberts and colleagues have been exploring domestic

energy consumption and in particular the impact digital
technologies have had on energy demand. They have
been auditing the number and type of digital devices that
people have at home and exploring the impact these
have had on the performance of a
range of everyday practices. Through
this research they have revealed that
many people purchase a huge range
of devices which they later regret as
they either do not perform the
function they originally hoped or they
create extra tasks which they had not anticipated. They
have also been trying to learn from people who already
take a more active role in managing their energy
supply, with the aim of identifying transferable lessons
that could be applied to future energy system
decentralization. They conducted walking interviews with
people around their homes to better understand the nature
of their domestic practices and the role energy intensive
digital diverse play in the performance of everyday life.
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Field-trialing digital sensors in UK households

Researchers involved with the

Centre for Research in Social
Simulation (CRESS) at Surrey
Sociology are working on
developing and
demonstrating ways in which
digital sensors can be used to advantage in social
research. A collaboration between CRESS and the
University of Surrey’s 5G Innovation Centre is drawing on
recent developments in the use of fixed and mobile sensors
to measure noise levels, air quality, temperature and
humidity, energy use and physical presence and motion.
The HomeSense project has now trialled the use of such
sensors in a sample of twenty households. Households
come in all sorts of configurations and they vary in how the
use of rooms is organised, the use of household devices
and energy sources, as well as in the purposes for which
members spend their time at home, alone and/or with
others.

HomeSense is demonstrating how to

collect data from fixed and mobile
sensors in these settings, and how to
manage, technologically and
responsibly, the intensive measuring of state, location and
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activity. It is showing how this method affects respondent

burden, consent, privacy and data security, and the extent
to which sensor-generated data contribute to meaningful
descriptions of socially relevant activities in conjunction with
time-use diaries, questionnaires and walking
interviews/observations.

The dark digital economy

Mike McGuire’s work is focused on the study of cybercrime,

technology and the justice system and he has published
widely in these areas. Recently
he teamed up with virtualisation
technology company Bromium
to produce “Into the Web of
Profit”, a research study
revealing the socio-economic and spending differences
among cybercriminals. Research in the report reveals how
income and spending are almost cliché. While
cybercriminals don’t have to pay taxes on their income,
their annual earning level might push them into some of the
higher brackets. The report notes a growing market
catering to cybercriminals by allowing them to buy things
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with virtual currency. Sites such as White Company, Bitcoin

Real Estate and de Louvois offer luxury products priced in
Bitcoin, which is becoming a concern for financial analysts.
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Relationships in Platform Societies

Interpersonal ties and networked intimacies

Ranjana Das has been exploring the links between digital

platforms and maternal interpersonal connections in the
critical ‘perinatal’ period before and
immediately after childbirth. Drawing
on qualitative interviews and online
data from a range of digital sites, she
advances the central argument that
digitally mediated interpersonal
connections are critical components of contemporary
motherhoods, but that these ties have complex positive
and less than positive nuances in the perinatal period, in
the context of the ‘moral weight’ of motherhood which
burdens and responsibilises women in neoliberal societies.
She notes the relative significance, in emotional terms, of
temporally-contained social ties in digitally mediated
perinatal connections and shows how the material and
emotional roles of traditionally held-to-be-important offline
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maternal support networks are re-negotiated, re-positioned

and even bypassed through online ties.

Ranjana Das and Paul Hodkinson have been considering

the ways in which new fathers use networked media to
emotionally self-disclosure as part and parcel of
negotiating, initiating and reciprocating emotional
intimacies in the context of mental health difficulties. They
focus closely on the ways in which platforms and their
affordances are worked with, within and against, in the
fraught and liminal moment of disclosure.

Dean Inwood is beginning new research on networked

intimacies and the notion of community in the use of dating
and hook-up apps by LGBTQ+ individuals.

Youth sexting practices

Emily Setty has been researching young people’s

experiences and understandings of sexting, in the context
of widespread concerns about privacy violations and
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unauthorized distribution, whereby

images are distributed beyond the
intended recipient without the
consent of the subject. Her work
draws on group and one-to-one
interviews with young people 14 to 18
years of age living in South Eastern
England to show how they constructed privacy rights and
obligations in sexting. The analysis suggests that their
constructions are shaped by individualistic orientations to
risk management, social meanings of privacy in the “digital
world,” and broader norms and values regarding gender,
trust, and approved conduct of behaviour in intimate
relationships. She concludes that educational and
community interventions on sexting with young people
should deconstruct and challenge narrow ethical
frameworks regarding privacy rights and obligations, and
young people’s tendency to blame and responsibilize
victims of privacy violations in sexting.
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Online misogyny

Jo Smith has been working on online misogyny experienced

by feminist women online. She examines the lived
experiences of those women who
have received misogynistic threats
or abuse, and those women who
have seen this online but have not
received the harassment
themselves. Surprisingly, despite
extensive news and social media interest in this
phenomenon, there has been little academic interest.
Using focus groups and interviews (conducted online) this
work aims to create a picture of the experiences of those
directly affected by online misogyny, told in their
voices. This study also seeks to examine online misogyny in
the context of academic discussions around hate crime.