Applying Practice-orientated Digital Sociology

The previous chapter developed a practice-orientated digital sociological framework, but it did not explain how the framework might be applied empirically. Nor did it fully set out an ontological or epistemological stance, or explain practices are stabilised, how materials come to be taken-for-granted, how agency is distributed within shared practices, and/or how elements travel between them. To address these shortfalls, this chapter revisits the framework to draw out an underlying philosophical stance. It connects practice theory ontology with an epistemic stance aligned with digital sociology and describes the bearing both have on examining how practices form, persist, and change. Next, the chapter turns to the research design of empirics underlying this book, illustrating how the framework has been operationalised. In doing so, it describes the research as a modified form of constructivist grounded theory, commensurable with the framework through the constructivist base of practice theory. The chapter concludes by setting out some of the strengths and limitations of the framework as an approach to studying the social consequences of specific digital maps, explaining it might be applied to research about other digital media drawing on other types of data.