What People Leave Behind

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

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2. Toward a Sociology of Traces

   • Francesca Comunello, Fabrizio Martire, Lorenzo Sabetta

   Pages 1-18Open Access

3. Traces Between Space, Interaction, and Symbols

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

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   2. Leaving a Trace: Donor Plaques as Material Evidences of Generosity?

      • Anne Monier

      Pages 21-36Open Access

   3. Rethinking Cultural Probes in Community Research and Design as Ethnographic Practice

      • Scott Townsend, Maria Patsarika

      Pages 37-57Open Access

   4. Traces of Social Binding: Interpretive Tracing as a Bridging Concept

      • Tilo Grenz, Keith Robinson

      Pages 59-73Open Access

   5. Clues of Displacement: The Gentrification of Silver Hill

      • Daniel J. Rose, Thomas P. Flynn

      Pages 75-91Open Access

   6. What Do Museum Visitors Leave Behind? The New Experience and the New Visitor in the Twenty-First Century

      • Aluminé A. Rosso

      Pages 93-108Open Access

4. Algorithms, Social Media, and Online Footprints

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 109-109

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   2. Investigating Exhaust Data in Virtual Communities

      • Stefano Agostini, Giovanna Gianturco, Peter Mechant

      Pages 111-127Open Access

   3. Retracing Algorithms: How Digital Social Research Methods Can Track Algorithmic Functioning

      • Biagio Aragona, Francesco Amato

      Pages 129-140Open Access

   4. Visible and Invisible Traces: Managing the Self on Social Media Platforms

      • Gaia Casagrande

      Pages 141-156Open Access

   5. Performative Intermediaries Versus Digital Regulation. A Multidisciplinary Analysis of the Power of Algorithms

      • Emma Garzonio

      Pages 157-172Open Access

5. Traces and Political Sphere: Capitalism, Surveillance, Personal Rights, and Moral Concerns

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 173-173

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   2. Surveilling the Surveillants: From Relational Surveillance to WikiLeaks

      • Andrea Borghini, Vincenzo Scalia, Daniela Tafani

      Pages 175-189Open Access

   3. When the Footprint Is a Carbon One: A Sustainable Paradigm for the Analysis of the Contemporary Society

      • Arianna Calderamo, Mariella Nocenzi

      Pages 191-204Open Access

   4. Material Traces of a Cumbersome Past: The Case of Italian Colonial History

      • Giovanna Leone, Laurent Licata, Alessia Mastropietro, Stefano Migliorisi, Isora Sessa

      Pages 205-220Open Access

   5. Video Surveillance and Public Space: Surveillance Society Vs. Security State

      • Tatiana Lysova

      Pages 221-236Open Access

   6. The Right to be Forgotten in the Digital Age

      • Maria Romana Allegri

      Pages 237-251Open Access

   7. Countering “Surveillance Capitalism.” The Intertwining of Objective and Subjective Factors

      • Emanuela Susca

      Pages 253-265Open Access

This open access book focuses on a particular but significant topic in the social sciences: the concepts of “footprint” and “trace”. It associates these concepts with hotly debated topics such as surveillance capitalism and knowledge society. The editors and authors discuss the concept footprints and traces as unintended by-products of other (differently focused and oriented) actions that remain empirically imprinted in virtual and real spaces. The volume therefore opens new scenarios for social theory and applied social research in asking what the stakes, risks and potential of this approach are. It systematically raises and addresses these questions within a consistent framework, bringing together a heterogeneous group of international social scientists. Given the multifaceted objectives involved in exploring footprints and traces, the volume discusses heuristic aspects and ethical dimensions, scientific analyses and political considerations, empirical perspectives and theoretical foundations. At the same time, it brings together perspectives from cultural analysis and social theory, communication and Internet studies, big-data informed research and computational social science.

This innovative volume is of interest to a broad interdisciplinary readership: sociologists, communication researchers, Internet scholars, anthropologists, cognitive and behavioral scientists, historians, and epistemologists, among others.

• Open Access
• Traces and Footprints
• Algorithms and Social Research
• Knowledge Capitalism
• Digital Traces
• Social Theory
• Trace-like Information
• Interactional Clues
• Data Exhaust
• Social Media Communication
• Unintended Consequences

• Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

  Francesca Comunello, Fabrizio Martire, Lorenzo Sabetta

Francesca Comunello (PhD) is a Full Professor at the Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome. Her research and publications focus on the intersections between digital technology and society, including digitally mediated social relations, ageing and digital communication, gender and ICT, civic engagement, digital platforms and disaster communication. She has been a member of several national and international research projects and research networks (including European Commission-funded projects); she has also been the PI of several research projects focusing on digital media. She has held a 2-year fellowship at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain), and was awarded a 5-week “Media and Communication Fellowship” by the School of Languages, Social and Political Sciences (LSAP), University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Her work has been published in highly ranked journals such as: New Media and Society, Information Communication and Society, Media Culture and Society, The Sociological Review, The Communication Review, Ageing and Society, American Behavioral Scientist, Violence Against Women, and International Journal of Press/Politics. She has authored 3 books: the most recent one (with Simone Mulargia) is Social Media in Earthquake-Related Communication (Emerald, 2018).

Fabrizio Martire (PhD) is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome. Among his main scientific interests: sociological theory, history of sociology and social researches, methodology of social researches (with a specific focus on data collection strategies and techniques), public opinion analysis, evaluation (with a specific focus on quality of social research outputs). On these issues he has organized and supervised several scientific projects, publishing almost 70 essays (monographs, edited volumes, articles in Italian and international journals, chapters). He has attended several international and Italian conferences, giving seminars in a number of foreign universities (Spain, Republic of Korea, Chile, Colombia). He is member of the Advisory Board of the Research Network – Quantitative Methods (RN21) of the European Sociological Association (since 2019); partner of the “Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability”, Berlin, Technische Universität; Member of the Scientific Committee of the Editorial Series “Methodology of Human Sciences”, official series of the Section of Methodology of the Italian Sociological Association (since 2017); and member of the Teaching Board of the doctoral course in communication, social research and marketing, Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome. Since 2021, he is the Director of the BA program in “Communication, technologies and digital cultures” at Sapienza University of Rome.

Lorenzo Sabetta (PhD) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Communication and Social Research, Sapienza University of Rome, and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Luiss University. Previously, he was a postdoc fellow in the USA, at the Department of Sociology at the University of Missouri/Columbia (2017-2018), and in Sweden, at the Institute for Analytical Sociology at Linköping University (2019-2020). He was also invited visiting researcher at Nuffield College at the University of Oxford (January-February 2022) and EkSoc Fellow at the Faculty of Economics and Sociology at University of Lodz (February-June 2022). He works at the intersection of sociological theory, cultural-cognitive sociology, sociology of knowledge, and methodology of social sciences. His recent publications include: The Anthem Companion to Robert K. Merton (Anthem Press, 2022, with C. Crothers); Against the Background of Social Reality. Defaults, Commonplaces, and the Sociology of the Unmarked (Routledge, 2022 forthcoming, with C. Lombardo); Appearance of Nothingness. An Analysis of Concealed Strategic Actions (in W. Brekhus, T. DeGloma, and W.R. Force, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Symbolic Interaction, 2021).