“Artificial sociality”: with regard to the discussions

Abstract

Growing importance of modern technologies, artificial intelligence and Internet network have a significant impact on modern social practices. As a result of all those changes, emerging artificial sociality attracts growing attention both in foreign and Russian sociology. Actor-network theory, in which an idea of modern world hybridity has been formulated, is one of the possible theoretical and methodological approaches to study artificial sociality. The article covers modern discussions surrounding the «artificial sociality» concept, as well as empirical aspects of this phenomenon research. The article offers a review of some new methodological approaches which are exploited by foreign sociologists in the context of rapidly growing digitalization, but are not currently used in Russian sociology. That is research of activity of social networks users and, in particular, visual cross-platform analysis; study of human behavior with the help of mobile devices and, in particular, study of mobile apps users’ behavior. Description of these methodological approaches represents scientific novelty of this article. Development of new research methods demonstrates the tendency of sociology development towards increasingly pronounced role of multidisciplinary research and increasingly close collaboration with modern computer technologies.