The modern world is entering a new stage of development - the fourth industrial revolution based on the integration of digital, intellectual and production technologies. This process radically changes the business environment and contributes to the emergence of new management models and organizational forms. The distinctive features of which are becoming the application of digital technologies. Key high technologies include artificial intelligence, unmanned transportation,3D printing, nanotechnology and biotechnology. Their development is causing profound changes in business, society and politics, contributing to the formation of new governance models and increased transparency. As a result, the digital economy - a new generation of economic relations based on the widespread use of digital solutions - is taking shape. The article is devoted to the study of the transformation of human capital management in the digitalization of the economy. The purpose of the work is a comprehensive analysis of the key challenges and trends of change in the sphere of labor in the conditions of digitalization, as well as the identification of approaches to adapting the system of human capital management to the new realities. The study is based on an extensive literature review of modern scientific and analytical sources. The study covers such aspects as changes in employment structure, introduction of artificial intelligence, automation of HR processes, development of digital competencies and new approaches to employee training. Special attention is paid to the role of the HR manager, which is evolving from operational to strategic, requiring not only mastery of digital tools, but also an understanding of the ethical and social implications of digitalization
The article deals with an issue of mentoring in the formation of social potential of young people using a sociological approach. In the conditions of changes in society and the labor market, mentoring is becoming an important tool for the adaptation of the younger generation. The purpose of the article is to analyze the key factors in the influence of mentoring programs on the process of training young specialists in production. The article emphasizes the importance of interaction between a mentor and a mentee in the context of transferring knowledge and work experience. An important feature of the work is a comprehensive analysis of the concept of “social potential of youth”, since it, according to many authors, forms a new working reality. The analysis is based on empirical data collected through surveys of college students who did or did not participate in mentoring programs. The study allowed to identify the students’ attitudes to such innovative programs. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the assessment (and subsequent analysis) of the quality of work of student interns from the point of view of the host party – the factory. The main conclusions of the work are that mentoring plays a key role in shaping the social potential of young people, inspiring them to an active civic position. By participating in significant professional projects within the framework of industrial practice at JSC Moscow Machine-Building Plant “Avangard”, JSC SSC “Keldysh Center”, young people develop professional skills and obtain their first work connections
The importance of the West Siberian oil and gas region for Russia, the extreme conditions of its development, and the need to create decent living conditions for its workers have made sociological research in this territory necessary. This article presents some results of a sociological study on the dynamics of social situation in an important Arctic region of Russia — the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (YNAO) — covering the period 1990–2020 and 2022–2024. The purpose of surveys conducted in the region was to identify and analyze changes in the social situation and their determining factors by studying the attitudes of Northerners toward different aspects of their lives. The study also aimed to develop proposals for authorities to improve the quality of life for various social groups in the Arctic population. Using the author’s sociological tools (mass survey questionnaires, expert sheets, focus group scripts, secondary data analysis techniques, social diagnostics), we monitored annually the opinions of different Northerners social groups. Special attention is given to the interregional use of labor resources and social infrastructure based on the rotational work method of labor organization. The research results include residents of the Arctic’ assessments of their state of health and health preservation possibilities, as well as quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the contingent of shift personnel and their attitudes toward social living conditions. This information about the social situation dynamics and the parameters characterizing it will help regional authorities to develop and justify strategies for the long-term sustainable development of the Arctic region.
This article is dedicated to analyzing the social foundations of metamodern culture in the context of transformations in the social space of the early 21st century. It critiques the reductive understanding of metamodernism merely as an aesthetic sensibility, emphasizing instead its deep entanglement with social transformations and structural shifts in society. The theoretical framework of the study is grounded in the works of U. Beck, A. Giddens, G. Standing, as well as in methodological approaches drawn from actor-network theory and topological analysis, which enable the interpretation of culture as a complex network of socially conditioned meanings and preferences. A key theme is the influence of socio-economic changes on the aesthetic paradigm of metamodernism. The article traces how shifts in societal structures—particularly the emergence of the precariat—shape new forms of aesthetic demand. Special attention is given to the legitimization of new cultural forms by art institutions. The study also examines the consequences of the post-ideological era, the ideological crises of multiculturalism, the rise of imagined communities, and cultural responses to global migration processes. The article further analyzes symbolic expressions of contemporary identity through the lens of the 60th Venice Biennale of 2024, where the theme of "the Other" acquired profound cultural significance. At the center of analysis is the ambivalence of the contemporary West, which simultaneously reproduces colonial narratives and seeks critical reflection upon them. The article concludes that metamodernism is not merely an aesthetic phenomenon but primarily a social one, representing a networked logic of cultural formation in the new post-industrial age. It argues that within metamodern culture, aesthetics serves not only a representational function but also a legitimizing one—responding to a social reality shaped by new classes, altered labor markets, and global identities.
The problem of inclusive employment of demobilized military personnel of the modern war is becoming particularly relevant in the context of the socio-economic recovery of Ukraine. The social responsibility of the state, society and business obliges us to create the most favorable conditions for our defenders to reintegration into civilian life. At the same time, the labor market of Ukraine is increasingly experiencing a shortage of workers, especially in "male" specialties. Therefore, the adaptation and even the creation of ergonomically new jobs for people with special needs goes from the plane of social responsibility to the field of economic feasibility and conditions for effective business. The purpose of the study is to theoretically substantiate the essence of inclusive employment of demobilized combatants with characteristics acquired as a result of the war, to conduct a practical analysis of the current state of this problem in Ukraine, and to identify areas for improving inclusive mechanisms for integrating veterans into socio-economic life. The hypothesis of the study is that effective employment of demobilized combatants with special needs is possible only if a comprehensive inclusive approach is implemented, which involves the adaptation of workplaces, professional retraining, psychological support, and partnership between the state, employers, and public organizations. The research methodology combines systemic, socio-economic, inclusive, comprehensive, and comparative approaches, statistical, and sociological methods (online surveys among the civilian population and in-depth interviews with demobilized servicemen). It has been established that the current state of employment of demobilized military personnel in Ukraine is characterized by a contradictory combination of high motivation of veterans to work and insufficient readiness of the labor market to accept them. The need to create an inclusive approach to employment that takes into account the physical, psychological and social characteristics of veterans remains one of the key tasks of the state policy of social reintegration. It has been proven that effective inclusive employment of war veterans requires a comprehensive approach that combines adaptation of workplaces, professional training and psychological and social support. At the same time, successful integration also depends on a number of factors: the degree of disability, personal characteristics, socio-economic environment and institutional support. Based on the study, conclusions were drawn about effective ways of supporting veterans and ways to improve them.
The problem of adequate performance of economic and social functions of labor remuneration and its compliance with the criteria of decent work is extremely relevant for Ukraine. The problem cannot be solved only by adjusting the existing and adopting new normative legal acts of labor law, since the corresponding legislative amendments must be accepted by the key parties to social and labor relations. The purpose of the article is to investigate the institutional environment in the field of labor remuneration in Ukraine in its various manifestations, to identify the most common institutional constructions, structures and practices that need correction and should become a priority object of state policy. The research was conducted using the methods of desk study. In the absence of official statistical data on the labor market and wages, indirect assessment methods were used based on available administrative data, materials of international organizations, results of sociological surveys, etc. The authors abandoned the traditional identification of institutions exclusively with formal organizations, which are mainly created by the government. The novelty is provided by the study of widespread informal institutional structures and practices, their main manifestations and socio-economic consequences. he study revealed that due to the low efficiency of controlling and punitive instruments of state regulation, several informal and implicit institutional structures have taken root in the institutional environment of the sphere of labor remuneration in addition to or instead of formal norms and rules, in particular, the shadowing of labor remuneration, labor remuneration based on individual agreements, unpaid overtime work, fictitious individual entrepreneurs, etc. Manifestations, main causes and consequences of the spread of informal practices are analysed. The impact of the full-scale military aggression against Ukraine on the labor market and labor force patterns in terms of working conditions and wages is assessed, and the risk of deepening shortage of workers for the needs of the post-war reconstruction is emphasized. The role of the government as the largest employer and the main transformations of the wage institution in the public sector are revealed. Conclusions have been made regarding the priority functions of the state in the sphere of wages, based on the need to ensure the resilience of the national economy.
Online misinformation poses a global risk with harmful implications for society. Ordinary social media users are known to actively reply to misinformation posts with counter-misinformation messages, which is shown to be effective in containing the spread of misinformation. Such a practice is defined as "social correction". Nevertheless, it remains unknown how users respond to social correction in real-world scenarios, especially, will it have a corrective or backfire effect on users. Investigating this research question is pivotal for developing and refining strategies that maximize the efficacy of social correction initiatives. To fill this gap, we conduct an in-depth study to characterize and predict the user response to social correction in a data-driven manner through the lens of X (Formerly Twitter), where the user response is instantiated as the reply that is written toward a counter-misinformation message. Particularly, we first create a novel dataset with 55, 549 triples of misinformation tweets, counter-misinformation replies, and responses to counter-misinformation replies, and then curate a taxonomy to illustrate different kinds of user responses. Next, fine-grained statistical analysis of reply linguistic and engagement features as well as repliers' user attributes is conducted to illustrate the characteristics that are significant in determining whether a reply will have a corrective or backfire effect. Finally, we build a user response prediction model to identify whether a social correction will be corrective, neutral, or have a backfire effect, which achieves a promising F1 score of 0.816. Our work enables stakeholders to monitor and predict user responses effectively, thus guiding the use of social correction to maximize their corrective impact and minimize backfire effects. The code and data is accessible on https://github.com/claws-lab/response-to-social-correction.
ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot with a massive user base of hundreds of millions, has become a global phenomenon. However, the use of Conversational AI Systems (CAISs) like ChatGPT for research in the field of Social Simulation is still limited. Specifically, there is no evidence of its usage in Agent-Based Social Simulation (ABSS) model design. This paper takes a crucial first step toward exploring the untapped potential of this emerging technology in the context of ABSS model design. The research presented here demonstrates how CAISs can facilitate the development of innovative conceptual ABSS models in a concise timeframe and with minimal required upfront case-based knowledge. By employing advanced prompt engineering techniques and adhering to the Engineering ABSS framework, we have constructed a comprehensive prompt script that enables the design of conceptual ABSS models with or by the CAIS. A proof-of-concept application of the prompt script, used to generate the conceptual ABSS model for a case study on the impact of adaptive architecture in a museum environment, illustrates the practicality of the approach. Despite occasional inaccuracies and conversational divergence, the CAIS proved to be a valuable companion for ABSS modellers.
In the context of the digital transformation of engineering and construction training, the paper discusses an electronic educational resource (EER), implemented by means of BIM design technology (Building Information Modelling, information model of an object) for studying the discipline «Technical expertise and technology of building reconstruction» at the Institute of Construction and Architecture of the Ural Federal University. The relevance of the study can be explained by the fact that insufficiently developed Russian regulatory framework and the limited distribution of domestic computer-aided design programs slow down the digital transformation of both the construction industry and the education system. The aim of the research is to describe the possibilities of electronic educational media using automatic design systems in the development of information models of reconstructed objects for the training of civil engineering bachelors, as well as to analyze regulations for overseeing the field of information design. To reach the aim of the study, the following objectives were achieved: the terminology has been clarified for the information model of the object for use in the learning process; the analysis of regulatory documents was carried out on the topic of digital modeling; examples of the use of BIM-technologies in the reconstruction of construction projects were given; an assessment was made of the significance of the technology considered in the process of training graduates for the construction industry. The object of the study is the process of training future construction workers at the Department of Industrial, Civil Engineering and Real Estate Expertise of the Ural Federal University using an EER and digital design methods for the reconstruction of construction projects. The subject of the study is the development of future civil engineers’ professional competence in the field of technical expertise and technology for the reconstruction of buildings using EER, implemented by means of BIM-design technology. The result is the development of educational and methodological support for the discipline «Technical Expertise and Technology of Building Reconstruction», based on the use of digital technology «Augmented Reality», which is aimed at developing bachelor skills for designing digital models of buildings and effectively use acquired knowledge for planning and distribution of resources (material, financial, labor) when organizing reconstruction work. The scientific novelty of the research consists of identifying the social significance of BIM design technology for the purpose of reconstruction of construction sites; developing the structure of the content of the basic block of bachelor training in order to develop professional competence in the field of reconstruction of construction projects in the digital educational environment of the university; the development of modern educational and methodological support for the educational process, taking into account the digital transformation of engineering training, the use of which will allow graduates to develop the necessary professional competence to work in an information and design environment. The practical significance is in the application of the developed EER in the learning process, which contributes to the development of students’ interest, forms the necessary professional competence of future civil engineers, increasing their competitive qualities for future work in the information and design environment.
Abstract What are the historical conditions under which a sociologically informed understanding of health inequality can emerge in the public sphere? We seek to address this question through the lens of a strategically chosen historical puzzle—the stubborn persistence of and salient variation in high infant mortality rates across British industrial towns at the dawn of the previous century—as analysed by Arthur Newsholme, the Medical Officer of the Local Government Board. In doing so, we retrace the historical processes through which the evolving public health movement gradually helped crystallise a scientific understanding of the social causes of excess mortality. We map the dominant ideology of the public sphere at the time, chart the shifting roles of the state, and retrace the historical origins and emergence of ‘public health’ as a distinctive category of state policy and public discourse. We situate the public health movement in this historical configuration and identify the cracks in the existing ideological and administrative edifice through which this movement was able to articulate a novel approach to population health—one that spotlights the political economy of social inequality. We relate this historical sequence to the rise of industrial capitalism, the social fractures that it spawned, and the organised counter‐movements that it necessitated.
One important approach to studying emotional labor is to focus on its negative impact from the perspective of organizational psychology. Less attention is paid to the positive effect. This paper adopts a cultural sociology approach to study how “maternity helpers” use boundary work, such as “deep acting” and constructing symbolic boundaries, to produce positive experiences in the process of emotional labor. In deep acting, they actively distort the boundaries of the private space, introduce a family-oriented narrative, and participate in a certain amount of “philanthropic labor”. They are also engaged in constructing symbolic boundaries by promoting themselves as “childcare experts”, in order to get the upper hand when interacting and negotiating with clients. Both boundary work strategies constitute an attempt to challenge social boundaries by constructing symbolic boundaries. This paper argues that the concept of autonomy in emotional labor should adopt a relational approach, thus accounting for the ability for the laborers to autonomously choose strategies that can produce equal and meaningful social relations, rather than merely focusing on the independent self with clear boundaries or the ability to control the labor process. Nevertheless, autonomy in emotional labor is constrained by both institutional and cultural conditions.
Paulo José Libardoni, Gabriel Eidelwein Silveira, Tamires Eidelwein
Introduction: The legal integration of work via technological platforms (applications) in the Brazilian legal system. Contextualization/concept: Under the terms of articles 7 and 114 of the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil of 1988, it is work and work relations that gain grammaticality and literality in the constitutional text, which inaugurate the concept of workability, when the tone of employment (industrial sector) would be giving way to work (services sector). Objective: The historical and normative broth induces a perspective of reflexivity in the midst of resisted change, which will impose on workers via the platform (as mostly urban workers) and labor institutions renewed forms of collective union political, legislative and organizational action, whether at a national or international level, to overcome obstacles that impede the effectiveness of constitutional labor standards. Methodology: The methodology follows comprehensive (Weberian) and extensive interpretative and constitutional historical analysis connected to excerpts from current reality, centered on the theoretical-normative method. Theoretical framework: For Weber (2000), legal norms have the function of disciplining and ordering actions and social relations, constituting maxims and, therefore, creating the conditions of administration and obedience of society's participants to the law. Conclusion: The duty to be constitutionally regulated inaugurated new labor precepts, which are still in resistance in the world of being, which imposes on actors and labor institutions the creation of a middle path suitable for the civil socio-labor integration of a new professional category of urban workers.
The article presents a review of foreign literature on the main approaches to protecting the health of the working population from the standpoint of industrial and restorative medicine. The article discusses the problems associated with psychosocial risks and stressful impacts at work / production, substantiates the need to implement measures based on the principles of prevention, recovery and rehabilitation. It is emphasized that today, requirements for working conditions, control over production processes, the relationship between requirements in the field of health protection of workers and their labor protection, as well as psychosocial factors - uncertainty at work, distracting breaks, lack of team spirit and etc. The policy of the enterprise, relevant industries, and the state itself in the field of protecting the health and life safety of workers is of decisive importance for the health of the working population. Teamwork involves not only the participation of health and safety employees, but also the employees and employers themselves at the respective workplaces / production sites, as well as the involvement of third-party experts. Sustainable employment of the working population is associated, according to scientists, with such aspects as maintaining and restoring the health of workers, economic productivity, social utility and a favorable long-term outlook. Problems of risks for workers require an integrated approach to the development of measures aimed at primary prevention, including the prevention of overwork, changing the style and organization of work, strengthening and maintaining health in general. An approach is considered important for preserving and restoring the health of the working population when it is advisable to combine measures for the primary prevention of health disorders not only with measures to optimize the organization and working conditions, but also with modern technologies of preventive and restorative medicine.
Introduction. Every year, about 350 thousand people die in the workplace for reasons related to production all over the world. The significance of this problem dictates the need to analyze fatal occupational injuries in order to further develop a set of measures aimed at preventing it. The study aims to analyze fatal occupational injuries at enterprises of the Republic of Bashkortostan on the basis of personalized data as an information basis for the development and justification of priority areas for the prevention of accidents in the workplace. Materials and methods. For analyzing the indicators of general occupational injuries and fatal injuries, we used the results of the all-Russian monitoring of labor conditions and safety of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, Russian Federation, analytical materials of labor conditions and safety of the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Protection of the Population of the Republic of Bashkortostan for the period 2017-2020. To assess the completeness of the accounting of occupational injuries in Russia and the Republic of Bashkortostan, the researchers used the ILO methodology "On assessing the reliability of statistics of accidents at work in countries with imperfect accounting". Based on the materials of 177 Acts on the investigation of fatal accidents (Form 4) provided by the State Labor Inspectorate in the Republic of Bashkortostan for the period 2017-2020, we have studied the circumstances and causes of the death of workers at work, their professional status and age-length characteristics. Results. The analysis of the dynamics of occupational injuries for 2017-2020 in the Russian Federation and the Republic of Bashkortostan showed a decrease in both total occupational injuries and fatal injuries, with a decrease in the frequency of worker deaths occurring at a faster pace. This provided an increase in the ratio of the total number of injuries to the number of fatal injuries, indicating an increase in the level of safety at enterprises and the quality of accounting for minor injuries. However, in 2020 the level of fatal industrial injuries in the Republic exceeded the same indicator in Russia by 25%. An in-depth analysis of fatal injuries based on accident investigation materials in the Republic of Bashkortostan for 2017-2020 showed that most often workers died in construction (0.77 per 1000 workers) and mining enterprises (0.75%) as a result of such types of accidents as traffic accidents, falling from a height, exposure to moving objects, flying rotating objects, parts, machines, etc. Specialists also observed a high level of fatal injuries in agriculture (0.58%), transport and storage enterprises (0.41%), water supply, sewerage (0.38%), etc. The main causes of fatal injuries were unsatisfactory organization of work (34.7%) and violation of traffic rules (29.2%). At the victim’s workplaces the researchers have identified a significant number of violations of labor protection requirements: the absence of special assessment of working conditions (SAWC), briefings and training on labor protection, violations of the work and rest regime, labor and industrial discipline, non-issuance of personal protective equipment (PPE) and the absence of mandatory preliminary and periodic medical examinations. Male workers were most often died (97.6%); in the profession of "driver"; at the age of 30-39 years. There is a very high proportion of victims with work experience of up to one year (44.6%). Almost 75% of the victims had less than 5 years of work experience. This indicates unsatisfactory training in occupational safety of newly hired workers, regardless of their age and previous experience at other enterprises. Conclusion. The in-depth analysis of fatal injuries at enterprises of the Republic of Bashkortostan showed the need to develop a set of targeted occupational safety measures aimed at reducing the level of occupational injuries, taking into account the most traumatic types of economic activity, the most frequent types of accidents and causes of accidents. In addition, special attention should be paid to the training of safe methods and techniques for performing the work of low-skilled workers, as well as the organization of checking the knowledge of traffic rules among drivers of vehicles.
Kai-Cheng Yang, Onur Varol, Alexander C. Nwala
et al.
While social media are a key source of data for computational social science, their ease of manipulation by malicious actors threatens the integrity of online information exchanges and their analysis. In this Chapter, we focus on malicious social bots, a prominent vehicle for such manipulation. We start by discussing recent studies about the presence and actions of social bots in various online discussions to show their real-world implications and the need for detection methods. Then we discuss the challenges of bot detection methods and use Botometer, a publicly available bot detection tool, as a case study to describe recent developments in this area. We close with a practical guide on how to handle social bots in social media research.
Online misinformation has been a serious threat to public health and society. Social media users are known to reply to misinformation posts with counter-misinformation messages, which have been shown to be effective in curbing the spread of misinformation. This is called social correction. However, the characteristics of tweets that attract social correction versus those that do not remain unknown. To close the gap, we focus on answering the following two research questions: (1) ``Given a tweet, will it be countered by other users?'', and (2) ``If yes, what will be the magnitude of countering it?''. This exploration will help develop mechanisms to guide users' misinformation correction efforts and to measure disparity across users who get corrected. In this work, we first create a novel dataset with 690,047 pairs of misinformation tweets and counter-misinformation replies. Then, stratified analysis of tweet linguistic and engagement features as well as tweet posters' user attributes are conducted to illustrate the factors that are significant in determining whether a tweet will get countered. Finally, predictive classifiers are created to predict the likelihood of a misinformation tweet to get countered and the degree to which that tweet will be countered. The code and data is accessible on https://github.com/claws-lab/social-correction-twitter.
In location-based social networks (LBSNs), users sense urban point-of-interest (PoI) information in the vicinity and share such information with friends in online social networks. Given users' limited social connections and severe lags in disseminating fresh PoI to all, major LBSNs aim to enhance users' social PoI sharing by selecting $k$ out of $m$ users as hotspots and broadcasting their fresh PoI information to the entire user community. This motivates us to study a new combinatorial optimization problem that involves the interplay between an urban sensing network and an online social network. We prove that this problem is NP-hard and also renders existing approximation solutions not viable. Through analyzing the interplay effects between the two networks, we successfully transform the involved PoI-sharing process across two networks to matrix computations for deriving a closed-form objective to hold desirable properties (e.g., submodularity and monotonicity). This finding enables us to develop a polynomial-time algorithm that guarantees a ($1-\frac{m-2}{m}(\frac{k-1}{k})^k$) approximation of the optimum. Furthermore, we allow each selected user to move around and sense more PoI information to share and propose an augmentation-adaptive algorithm with decent performance guarantees. Finally, our theoretical results are corroborated by our simulation findings using both synthetic and real-world datasets.
This scientific report presents a study conducted by the Research Center for Social and Political Monitoring of the RANEPA Institute of Social Sciences. The relevance of research . A significant part of the able-bodied population in the country is engaged in in the shadow economy, with a significant amount of funds remaining unaccounted for. There is an obvious need to resolve the conflict of interest between the state and the citizens involved in the shadow economy, to stimulate official employment and limit non-criminal shadow economic activity while maintaining a balance of interests of all economic actors. The goal of the study is to analyze and evaluate the dynamics of the involvement of various groups of the employed population in the shadow labor market, to find optimal solutions stimulating official employment and limiting non-criminal shadow economic activity. The subject of the study is the state and dynamics of the formation of the shadow labor market in modern conditions. The main research method is an all-Russian sociological survey of the employed Russian population and a comparison of the results obtained with earlier surveys. Based on the results of the study , this paper presents an analysis and assessment of the dynamics of the involvement of various groups of the employed population in various forms of shadow relations in the labor market. The study allows us to draw the following conclusions . The results of the study show that over the past two years there has been an increase in the participation of the public in the shadow economy. The largest proportion of informal workers is still noted among those employed in private practice as their main job. Among the hired workers, the share of those without formal registration remains unchanged and even increased slightly over the past year. In general, a significant share of the employed population continues to be quite loyal to various manifestations of non-criminal shadow economic activity. This situation creates the prerequisites for maintaining the involvement of the population in the shadow labor market. Among the measures contributing to the reduction of informal employment, the respondents primarily note a reduction in tax payments, a decrease in social inequality and an increase in the role of social guarantees and social protection for workers in the formal economy. The scientific novelty of this study lies in the fact that it seeks to obtain up-to-date sociological information about the main processes taking place in the shadow labor market, their development trends in a changing epidemiological and socio-economic situation. The recommendations based on the results of the study are related to the need to adjust management decisions in the field of stimulating official employment and limiting the participation of the population in the shadow labor market.
What would it mean for sociology to make climate change a core disciplinary concern? This article reviews research on a selection of trends brought on by the climate crisis: ( a) compounding and cumulative disasters, infrastructure breakdown, and adaptation; ( b) intensifying migration and shifting patterns of settlement; and ( c) transformations in consumption, labor, and energy. While climate change's far-reaching implications remain peripheral to the discipline at large, sociologists studying these trends increasingly understand the crisis as a central problem for the study of social life. We show how sociologists can shed light on core problems emerging from and contributing to the crisis, and also reveal the conditions that make necessary social and cultural transformations more likely. Throughout, we illuminate how sociology can help chart a path out of the climate crisis by identifying alternatives to the high-carbon, low-equity social structures that organize the modern world. Finally, we identify possibilities for scholars who do not see themselves as “environmental sociologists” to contribute meaningful research on the climate crisis, and we encourage them to do so while we can make a difference.
As social media sites are penetrating our daily lives in an ever-increasing manner, there is a need to revisit and reexplore the theoretical concepts that have gone through paradigm shifts due to the influence of these platforms. In this regard, audience labor theory, which was originally conceptualized in the context of mass media, needs to be reexamined as the divide between production and consumption is getting narrower. Users are no longer passive consumers since social media sites have reduced the cost of production and resulted in the advent of the term “prosumption.” In such a case, as production involves performing work and results in surplus-value, it needs to be investigated whether users are being exploited for the free work they provide on these platforms. From the several identified forms of digital labor, I will focus on the concept of audience labor. To this end I will focus on identifying labor strategies that Iranian Instagram influencers employ; these strategies involve exploiting their followers to perform tasks that produce fame and visibility as well as monetary gains but leave the users uncompensated for the work they have performed. By conducting content analysis of the 2,130 stories created by 71 Iranian Instagram influencers, this study will identify the strategies that these influencers use to exploit their followers.