A print-based publication might seem a rather old-fashioned means of addressing the question of digital sociology. Indeed, tackling any question these days is increasingly unlikely to involve consulting a book. Instead most people's immediate approach to making sense of the question “What is Digital Sociology?” is likely to involve turning to Google (or perhaps Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo and other alternative search engines). Some individuals looking for a deeper dive might check Wikipedia or perhaps search a bibliographic database for a couple of algorithmically recommended articles. In contrast, sitting down and methodically working your way through a 40,000-word book might appear a rather long-winded way of going about things.

This abundance of online information reflects the fast-changing nature of scholarship and knowledge. It also flags up the need for sociologists to pay serious attention to “the digital.” Google, Wikipedia and similar information sources are not simply washing over academic disciplines such as sociology and leaving things unchanged. Instead, these technologies are significantly influencing the ways that knowledge is being developed and disseminated. As such, they are technologies that sociologists need not only to be making clever use of but also developing critical stances toward.

From this perspective, there is good reason to engage in “long-form” reading and writing around the question of digital sociology. While the internet is proving a flourishing forum for all manner of sociological conversations, it is telling that a specific sense of “digital sociology” has been most rigorously refined to date through full-length books. Sociological thinking around these issues was first captured in a prescient collection edited by Kate Orton-Johnson and Nick Prior (2013) – fifteen chapters that continue to provide a strong theoretical basis for anyone working in the field. Three years later, this was complemented by a wide-ranging survey of empirical and conceptual pieces edited by Jessie Daniels and her colleagues (2016), showcasing the diversity of “first-wave” digital sociology thinking and research across North America, Europe and Australasia. Published around the same time as these edited collections were sole-authored titles by Deborah Lupton (2014) and Noortje Marres (2017). Among other things, Lupton's book developed a great framework for making sense of digital sociology in terms of digital theory-building, digital methods and digital scholarship. Extending these themes, Marres provided a thorough grounding in the ontological and epistemological challenges thrown up by digital methods of social inquiry and analysis. These four books continue to be must-read references for anyone looking to venture into this area.

As these previous titles demonstrate, long-form books offer a welcome opportunity to slow down and take stock of what are rapidly evolving ideas. There is clear merit in continuing to blog, tweet, podcast and (un)conference about matters relating to digital sociology. Yet there is also clear benefit in engaging in uninterrupted, linear reflection that takes a little more effort and time. So this book seeks to provide a further opportunity to consider what it means to engage in sociological work that “relates to the digital … is directed at the digital … but also of the digital” (Carrigan 2015). There are a number of themes and principles underpinning our discussions. On the one hand is an awareness of what is taking place outside of sociology. It is important to remember that recent developments in digital sociology have not occurred in a vacuum. In this sense, care needs be taken in locating these ideas in relation to developments beyond the discipline. Indeed, one of the challenges when attempting to talk about digital sociology is the increasingly blurred distinction between straight-ahead sociological work and the mass of cognate work taking place across the digital humanities, new media studies, communications, design and computational subjects. As will be reiterated throughout this book, digital sociology is an inherently interdisciplinary endeavor that spans many different disciplinary boundaries.

On the other hand is the need to remember that this remains a book specifically about sociology. While reflecting on inter/intra-disciplinary cross-overs, we must not forget to emphasize what is inherently sociological about our interests. After all, this is a book concerned with digital sociology rather than “digital social sciences” or “critical digital studies.” As such, it takes care to locate current concerns over digital sociology in relation to the “bigger picture” of sociology. One feature of this approach is a willingness to move on quickly from the surface-level features and novelties of the digital. If we are not careful, discussions of digital sociology can soon get bogged down in excessively descriptive and sometimes exoticized stories of how individuals now encounter and experience the digital. Examining the lived experiences of digitally mediated society is important but must be appropriately grounded in what might appear to be relatively dry issues of social structure, political economy, power relations, and so on. Thus while this book considers a range of current hot topics within digital culture and digital life, it does so within appropriately micro and macro levels of analysis.

If nothing else, this hopefully gives the book a longer shelf life than many other discussions of digital society. Rather than over-focusing on specific instances of how “the digital” is currently being experienced, this text is concerned primarily with enduring ideas and issues. The arguments, issues and ideas outlined here should remain relevant long after Twitter, Facebook, Mechanical Turk, and so on, have fallen out of fashion. Indeed, there is clear benefit to retaining a strong sense of history when talking about digital society – to remain mindful of where our current concerns sit within the history of sociological thought. In this sense, previous discussions of digital sociology have sometimes suffered from not being sufficiently grounded in the discipline's “pre-digital” work on technology. This book therefore takes care to foreground connections with nineteenth- and twentieth-century sociology – both as a rejoinder to ahistorical accounts of digital sociology and as a means of highlighting the strong connections with long-running concerns in mainstream sociology.

So, despite the definitive promise of its title, this short book does not set out to provide the final word on the subject. Instead, I hope that it offers an entry point to a burgeoning field of sociological activity and thought. For instance, there are many writers and theorists whom the book is able only to touch on in passing but are definitely worth engaging with in depth. Chapter 3's overview of digital methods skips through a range of different methods, each of which merits a full book in its own right. Chapter 4's indicative discussions of digital race and digital labor are intended to inspire readers to delve into other literatures on equally significant topics. There is plenty more to this area of sociology than can be squeezed into any single title. So I hope that this book will prompt readers to get thinking about the distinctively sociological things that still need to be said about the fast-changing “digital” conditions and circumstances in which many of us now live. Most importantly, it is intended to get readers thinking both about what the project of “digital sociology” is and about what it could be. Of course, as with most “What is?” questions in the social sciences, there are few specific straightforward answers to this book's title. Nevertheless, there are plenty of possibilities that warrant our sustained intellectual energy and attention.