Séances de la conférence

At a time where the ‘Me Too’ movement, Black Lives Matter, and the finding of Unmarked Graves raise critical questions around decolonization, social change and critically considering what ‘sustaining shared futures’ really means, the concept of allyship becomes paramount: What is an ally in the role for social change? Where does allyship get produced and who gets to be an ally? What does it look like in practice and what does it do? This panel seeks to foster a discussion on the concept of allyship - it’s limitations and possibilities, and the role it plays in working towards decolonization and a ‘sustained shared future’.

Asian diasporas constitute almost 20 percent of the Canadian population. It is the largest, fastest growing, and diverse visible minority group in Canada. The history of Asian immigration to Canada is intertwined with the complicated colonial history of both the countries of origin and Canada as a settler colony. This session seeks to showcase research by Asian diaspora researchers who explore possibilities of decolonial solidarity through their work, and aims to encourage dialogues between Asian diasporas, and Indigenous and other racialized communities.

Concerns have emerged over the veracity and validity of information found on the Internet, necessitating critical examination of the impacts of “fake news”, misinformation, disinformation, and media narratives in both online and offline spaces. Indeed, how digital media serve to fundamentally manipulate users based on the interpretation of what one consumes is still a nascent area in sociological research. Therefore, this session highlights theoretical and empirical research that explores the challenges associated with our understanding and interpretation of truth, misinformation, and media narratives in the digital age.

As the sociological study of technology continues to progress, many questions remain unanswered regarding the social implications of digital technologies in our everyday lives and on society-at-large. With this in mind, our annual ITDS general session broadly explores the complex intersections of technology and society by highlighting scholarship that offers new directions and critical contributions to the emerging subfield of digital sociology. This session aims to provide a space for digital sociologists to share their diverse research interests, including presentations on topics of online identity management, emotional expression on social media, AI and disability, locative media, and autonomous vehicles.

The Internet and other digital technologies provide relatively new platforms for experiencing criminal and deviant activities, as well as serve to produce new varieties of ‘victims’ and ‘offenders’. The unique structural conditions in online spaces have also obscured normative expectations, reinforced social inequalities, complicated responses from police and the legal system, and have even called into question the applicability of existing theoretical frameworks to explain offending in this context. These are among the many challenges that require further investigation by cybercrime scholars. To this end, this session highlights current empirical and/or theoretical contributions to the sociological study of cybercrime and online deviance, including topics such as adult cyber-victimization, ransomware victimization, routine online activity theory, digital surveillance for gender-based violence, and mortgage income fraud.