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There are currently no concerted attempts to understand the role of whistleblowers in the new social and political environment created by digital ICTs. Digital ICTs drive an accelerating visibility where elites and citizens constantly acquire new tools to track, surveil, and scrutinize each other. Moreover, these technologies make possible a new kind of invisibility. Increasingly complex modes of digital data production and usage generate grey areas that seem to escape legal jurisdiction and democratic oversight. With their privileged access inside these grey areas, conscientious employees-turned-whistleblowers are likely to become key sources for the disclosure of serious wrongdoing in the coming years. The argument is empirically illustrated through three cases that represent different types of grey areas in advanced democracies: big data surveillance (Edward Snowden), tax havens (Antoine Deltour and the Panama and Paradise Papers), and digital political profiling (Christopher Wylie). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue of Information, Communication, and Society (ICS) is edited by the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology (CITAMS) section of the American Sociological Association and includes papers that were first presented at either the 2021 or 2022 ASA meetings or Media Sociology Symposia. For this special issue, an innovative editorial approach was taken that brought the editing process into a graduate classroom. That process is described below along with a brief introduction to themes of the selected articles. Key themes for this special issue include content analysis, ethics, privacy, new economy, and digital inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on my experience over two decades as part of an early generation of scholars who graduated with a PhD in sociology into a career as a researcher and teacher in the multidisciplinary field of digital media. I reflect on my experiences to offer an assessment of the state of digital media scholarship within sociology and the field of communication. The study of digital media remains underdeveloped within sociology. In part, this is due to disciplinary failures, an array of relevant, specialized areas within sociology have yet to fully realize the role of digital media. Sociological perspectives are also constrained through a dominant 'communication perspective' at the center of the field of communication. Communication is home to most digital media scholars and uses its institutional dominance to arbitrate what qualifies as scholarship. Whereas communication serves as a plural disciplinary catch-all for the subjects of the social sciences, it often does so without crossing the boundaries of a relatively homogeneous, epistemological framework. That framework does not adequately represent sociological perspectives on digital media. I point to key differences between sociology and communication that tend to marginalize sociological perspectives. These differences have also served to render the field of communication less relevant to sociology (and likely to other disciplines in the social sciences). I stress the importance of building institutions and practices that support (multi)disciplinary representation in the field to strengthen sociology and other perspectives and avoid a myopic lens on our understanding of digital media and social life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current period of disruptive social change is inextricably bound up with new means and modes of communication, information, and media streams. The Communication, Information Technologies & Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS) locates these factors at the center of our collective interests, investigating them through a plethora of methods, theories, and empirical cases. Each year, CITAMS runs a special issue in ICS showcasing select works presented at the previous year's American Sociological Association conference and the affiliated Media Sociology preconference. Papers in the 2022 CITAMS Special Issue reflect a social context defined by a prolonged global pandemic and wrought by democratic uncertainty. Across these social circumstances, technology and media loom large. Simultaneously, everyday life continues and classic CITAMS scholarship sustains relevance for the ways people interact, construct identity, consume, and mobilize. All of this and more are contained in the pages of this year's Special Issue, from which readers can get a sense of what CITAMS has to offer and consider how their own work may fit within the broad CITAMS umbrella. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technologies change users' existing social, cultural, and material practices by providing new opportunities for reflecting on and managing their lives. As technological advancements pervade our private and professional lives, users are tempted to see them as 'magic bullets' that can help them become more organized and efficient. In this paper, we introduce the term 'time hacking' to capture the various ways technologies mediate users' time perception and perspective. We will use the examples of virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa and the Quantified Self Movement to illustrate how people feel that they are capable of hacking time by using devices and programs. Imagining tools as neutral entities that help them better manage their lives in a world that seems increasingly sped up, users are often blind to the multifarious ways these technologies, and the companies that produce them, shape what they attend to and how they make sense of information. The concept of time hacking helps us examine what narratives users construct and share about timesaving tools and how users' perception of and perspective about time changes in response to emerging technologies. Most importantly, time hacking can help to explain the allure of timesaving technologies, why users might be enthusiastic about taking them up and integrating them into their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]