Social Science in the Age of Social Media

Kieran Healy informally examines how social science, and especially sociology, has been affected by the rise of social media. New social media platforms disintermediate communication, make people more visible, and encourage public life to be measured. They tend to move the discipline from a situation where some people self-consciously do “public sociology” to one where most sociologists unselfconsciously do sociology in public. Healy discusses the character of such “latently public” work, the role of data and data visualization in it, and the opportunities and difficulties it creates.

Kieran Healy is Associate Professor in Sociology and the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. His research focuses on the moral order of market societies. In particular he is interested in the relationship between measurement and social classification, and the link between them in markets for things ranging from human organs to consumer credit. He also works on techniques and methods for data visualization, and problems in social theory.