Digital transformation of social theory | Virtual Special Issue of Technological Forecasting and Social Change
Introduction
Steffen Roth, Harry F. Dahms, Frank Welz, and Sandro Cattacin: Print theories of computer societies. Introduction to the digital transformation of social theory
ICT and the increasing availability of digital data are dramatically changing the processes of research and knowledge production in the social sciences and humanities (SSH). Whereas the methodological momentum in digital humanities and computational social sciences is already immense, theory development in the SSH is much less dynamic and consists mainly of digital resurrections of the classics of our fields. The contributions to this virtual special issue of Technological Forecasting and Social Change do, therefore, not constitute efforts at presenting new social theories of the digital transformation, but rather, efforts at digitally transforming social theory. This introduction presents an overview of the topic and the contributions and outlines key elements of a research agenda on the digital transformation of social theory.
Articles
Marinus Ossewaarde: Digital transformation and the renewal of social theory: Unpacking the new fraudulent myths and misplaced metaphors
Emrah Karakilic: Rethinking intellectual property rights in the cognitive and digital age of capitalism: An autonomist Marxist reading
Karl Palmås: From hacking to simulation: Periodizing digitally-inspired social theory
José Javier Blanco Rivero: The fractal geometry of Luhmann’s sociological theory for debugging systems theory
Steffen Roth: Digital transformation of social theory. A research update
Jean-Sébastien Guy: Digital technology, digital culture and the metric/nonmetric distinction
Matthias Wenzel and Matthias Will: The communicative constitution of academic fields in the digital age: The case of CSR