JCS本刊論文 | 社會學視域下的五種數字觀

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The Journal of Chinese Sociology

2025年11月10日，The Journal of Chinese Sociology（《中國社會學學刊》）上線文章Five perspectives on the digital: a sociological interpretation（《社會學視域下的五種數字觀》。

| 作者簡介

劉雨婷

華東師范大學社會發展學院講師、晨暉學者

主要研究方向：數智社會學與發展社會學（數字文化、數字工作、社會轉型與治理）

Abstract

The term digital is now central to most contemporary discussions of social development, yet its referent remains ambiguous. Its meaning is often reduced to a narrow understanding of technical conditions and tools. This article distinguishes five perspectives on the meaning of digital: technical digital, value digital, action digital, cultural digital, and normative digital, offering a sociological interpretation of its connotations. From this standpoint, the concept digital is multi-faceted. It can be conceptualized as: (1) the material basis of digital society; (2) a symbolic value representation; (3) a social dispositif for coordinating action; (4) a fluid cultural situation; and/or (5) a set of normative social requirements. Differentiating these nuanced perspectives of the term helps move beyond essentialist accounts grounded solely in technological determinism, better enabling an analysis of the open-ended social logic of digital society. This article, then, lays an important foundation for advancing digital research and underscores the need to construct a coherent conceptual system delineating “the digital” while outlining potential pathways for such development.

Keywords

Digital society; Digital sociology; Perspectives on the digital; Cultural digital; Normative digital

Introduction

The concept digital has become a global key term in contemporary social development. In China, the construction of a “Digital China” is identified as a central objective in both the 14th Five-Year Plan and the 2035 long-term development goals of The Communist Party of China (CPC). The report of the 20th National Congress of the CPC underscores the imperative to accelerate the process of its development. Furthermore, the Overall Layout Plan for the Construction of Digital China, issued jointly by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council, frames it as a vital engine for advancing Chinese modernization in a digital age and as a foundation for enhancing national competitiveness. Within this policy context, Chinese sociology faces the task of innovating digital-oriented sociological theory, drawing on China’s specific experiences while situating them within a global analytical framework.

Conceptual construction is a foundational task in theorization, as concepts themselves carry inherent theoretical implications. Yet the theoretical development of the term and meaning of what is digital as a concept remains limited. In much of the existing literature, its referent is vague and inconsistent, often reduced to a narrow focus on technical conditions and tools. Such conceptual imprecision not only constrains academic dialogue but also impedes the advancement of digital research. It is therefore both crucial and urgent to undertake a systematic sociological analysis of the connotations of what is digital, thereby laying the groundwork for more rigorous and cumulative theoretical development.

This article distinguishes five perspectives on the meaning of digital: technical digital, value digital, action digital, cultural digital, and normative digital. They are sociological interpretations of the digital, mutually complementary and reinforcing, forming a network-like relational structure. These perspectives also function as conceptual tools that delineate substantive problem domains and, at their intersections, generate new insights for future research.

Research question:

the connection between

digital and social imagination

and its conceptual dilemmas

The concept of a digital society emerges from the intersection of the term digital with a new form of social imagination. The notion that we inhabit a digital society has become an implicit backdrop to both everyday life and academic research. This society is sustained by a holistic imagination in which discourses of promise and anxiety as well as aspiration and fear, are intertwined. From a more utopian angle, linking “the digital” to “the social” evokes a vision of a better future—one grounded in connection, openness, freedom and universal access to information and knowledge. In this scenario, new social networks would flourish, democracy would evolve toward more participatory and interactive forms, and novel models of the digital economy would generate fresh social and economic vitality. This imaginary also encompasses a belief in the transformative capacity of the digital to address pressing social problems. For example, the 2020 Digital Society Index survey by Dentsu Aegis Group reported that 78% of Chinese respondents believed digital technology could resolve the world’s most urgent challenges—24% higher than the global average. From a dystopian perspective, critiques of digital society point to the alienation of interpersonal relationships, the erosion of individual freedom and intrusions into private life, alongside mounting concerns over digital surveillance, data misuse and theft, privacy violations as well as the widening of digital inequality and discrimination. Whether conceptualized as rupture, revolution, mutation or evolution, society has undoubtedly entered a period increasingly inscribed with digital traces. Yet, as an unfinished social imaginary, the digital society has yet to converge on a unified model of social success. The core concept underpinning its narrative, digital, remains deeply contested, marked by confusion, ambiguity, inconsistency and bias. It faces two notable conceptual dilemmas: one epistemological and the other ontological.

The first conceptual dilemma lies in the multiplicity of referents for the term digital, a variability that is often obscured by its broad and uncritical usage. In the existing literature, these referents can be grouped into three primary categories: (1) numbers; (2) digital technology in the broad sense of binary code; and (3) data. For example, in much research on digitalization in rural areas, the term digital typically encompasses the first two categories. Some scholars conceptualize rural digitalization as the application of quantitative management technologies, where digital technology denotes numerical management, as proposed by Ray Huang (Wang 2016). Others frame rural digitalization as a process of comprehensive transformation, advancing agriculture, rural infrastructure and peasant development, through the adoption of digital technologies such as internet connectivity and e-commerce platforms (Liu and Luo 2022; Zhang and Qiu 2022). In another interpretation, digital, grounded in binary code, functions as a symbolic equivalent of numeric or number, in that it can be calculated, deduced and manipulated (Kaufmann and Jeandesboz 2017). The third referent is data. In the notion of “digital selves”, for instance, digital is understood as data that describes and constitutes identity (Cheney-Lippold 2017: 33). Similarly, in studies of “digital control”, the term is used to describe the process by which platform systems govern delivery workers through data-driven mechanisms, integrating data, algorithms and predictive models (Chen 2020).

The second conceptual dilemma is that discussions of digital remain largely confined to technological ontology, thereby neglecting its complex social dimensions. Most definitions of the digital society are grounded in this technological framing. For example, some scholars describe it as a new social formation in which digital technologies profoundly shape daily life, social relationships, governance, business, the economy and the production and circulation of knowledge—in short, the referent is the “digitization of life” (Lupton 2014: 1–2). Others emphasize its infrastructural foundations, arguing that a digital society operates through big data, artificial intelligence, algorithmic systems and cloud computing, with network structures and platforms as its dominant organizational forms (Dobrinskaya 2021). In this sense, digital society is understood as a variant of technological society, driven by the pervasive integration of data-centric technologies (Chen and Xie 2020).

A smaller body of work adopts a relational perspective, defining the digital society as the social form of the digital age, constituted through the interactions amongst people, technologies and data (Wang 2021). Taken together, prevailing definitions converge on the view that digital society is a new social configuration in which digital technologies are deeply embedded across all levels of social life, including organizations, institutions, individuals and groups, becoming an inseparable component of a said social system. Yet, as with all conceptual terms, digital is normatively loaded; it frames certain aspects while obscuring others, shaping how phenomena are perceived and studied. Reducing digital to a purely technical condition or tool, then, risks overlooking its broader social essence as a site of meaning-making, value formation and normative ordering.

With this in mind, what, precisely, does the core concept of digital signify? A review of the literature suggests that this question remains insufficiently addressed, thus revealing a persistent conceptual dilemma. First, there is substantial variation in how the term is understood and deployed, resulting in overlapping, ambiguous and sometimes contradictory interpretations. Second, the dominance of technocratic determinism in defining digital tends to obscure its complex social dimensions. These conceptual problems are not merely semantic; they shape the trajectory of much related research. Ambiguity constrains academic dialogue, while neglect of the social dimensions of digital undermines the possibility of producing accurate, nuanced and comprehensive analyses. For sociology, therefore, digital should not be adopted uncritically as a fashionable label. Instead, careful conceptual construction is required to make it an effective analytical tool—one capable of supporting robust observation, informed dialogue and cumulative research.

Although digital is often conceived primarily as a technological form, its meaning extends well beyond technical domains. Drawing on social science research in both Chinese and global contexts, and informed by relevant literature and current developments, this article identifies five major sociological perspectives on the conception of digital: technical digital, value digital, action digital, cultural digital, and normative digital. These perspectives are interrelated and mutually influential, yet their emergence has been diachronic, reflecting an expanding diversification of the social meanings attached to the concept digital.

Chronologically, the notion of technical digital appeared first, when digital technologies and devices were initially regarded as tools created and deployed by humans. Because value judgments about digital technologies have accompanied their development from the outset, the concept of value digital emerged alongside technical digital and continues to evolve in parallel. In the early stages, the use of digital technologies and devices was relatively limited, and the perspectives of action digital, cultural digital and normative digital had yet to take shape. With the normalization and widespread integration of digital technologies into everyday life, action digital developed through the expanded interplay between digital systems and human practices. Cultural digital emerged in processes of cultural digitization and commercialization, while normative digital crystallized as digital technologies began to regulate not only individual self-formation but also broader social values and normative orders. Following the diachronic sequence in the development of the social meanings of digital as detailed here, this article offers a comprehensive analysis of these five sociological perspectives through a close examination of the concept’s semantics. It further explores their interrelations, distinctive forms and respective problem domains.

Technical digital:

the material basis of a digital society

The technical digital constitutes the material foundations of a digital society, encompassing both “executable” digital technologies and “usable” technological devices. It highlights the technical essence of the digital, marked by materiality, abstraction and binary dualism.

Semantic analysis

of digital:

from finger counting to binary code

The use of the term “digital” to describe binary computer systems can be traced to the historical practice of counting on fingers. In French, the English expression “digital society” is rendered in two ways: la société numérique and la société digitale. The distinction between numérique and digital remains a subject of debate. As an adjective, numérique has three meanings: (1) relating to computer systems that represent data using binary code (in this sense, synonymous with digital, e.g., “digital TV channels”); (2) pertaining to numerical operations; and (3) considering things from a numerical perspective (e.g., “they have an advantage in numbers”). As a noun, numérique refers to computer systems that express data in binary code (0 and 1), applicable to text, sound, and images. By contrast, digital as an adjective has two main senses: (1) relating to fingers; and (2) in modern usage, denoting computer science concepts associated with binary digital information encoding patterns—a meaning borrowed from English. While both numérique and digital may refer to binary code-based technologies, the use of digital in the phrase “digital society” has been criticized by the Académie fran?aise, given that the adjective originally had no connection to binary systems.

In French, digital derives from the Latin digitalis (“pertaining to fingers”), itself from digitus (“finger”), which is also the etymological root of the English words digit and digital. Initially, digital referred to counting and numerical systems, originating in the widespread use of fingers for counting. By the late seventeenth century, it came to denote numerical data recorded or transmitted in discrete, independent units. For example, a clock that displays numbers on its dial is called a digital clock, in contrast to an analogue clock with a continuously moving pointer. The rise of electronic computing in the mid-twentieth century created a need for new terminology to describe emerging methods of data processing and transmission. Digital became a convenient term for binary-based computing systems and, with the subsequent shift from analogue to digital communication, especially its integration into daily life, entered widespread usage through the concept of “digitalization.”

The distinction between numérique a-nd digital in French can be further elucidated by examining the related terms la numérisation and la digitalisation. La numérisation refers to the process of converting analogue information into digital form, while la digitalization denotes the transformation of services (such as finance or business) through the increasing use of information technologies. In this sense, the linguistic imagination of numérique is oriented toward technology and encoding, whereas that of digital is oriented toward experience and usage. English displays a parallel distinction between “digitization” and “digitalization.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “digitization” refers to “the action or process of converting data into digital form”, whereas “digitalization” refers to “the adoption or increase in the use of digital or computer technologies by an organization, industry, country, etc.”. As in the French, the former focuses on the conversion of individual streams of analogue information into discrete digital bits, while the latter describes the reorganization of multiple spheres of social life around digital communication and media infrastructures. Drawing on the French distinction, applications can be conceptualized as integrating both executable numérique and usable digital elements. Recognizing these semantic nuances helps to reveal the layered technological dimensions embedded within the concept of the digital.

Two essential aspects

of technology:

“executable” digital technologies

and “usable” technological devices

Within the technical dimension, the digital comprises two essential aspects. The first is executable digital technologies or novel technological processes grounded in binary structures, including networking, platformization, algorithmic systems and informatization. The second is usable technological devices, consisting of tools that provide specific conveniences or assemblages of tools that form an equipmental environment. The relationship between these two lies in their functional interdependence: executable digital technologies constitute the systemic knowledge base and operational foundation for the creation of usable technological devices, with the latter representing the concrete, material embodiments of digital technologies. The functions of usable devices are not determined solely by their physical attributes, but by the executable digital technologies or encoding sequences that can be read, interpreted and executed by machines or system components that animate them. Together, executable digital technologies and usable technological devices form the material infrastructure of digital society.

From the initial articulation of digital-technology principles to the late-twentieth-century boom, voice, sound and image were progressively translated from the analogue to the digital domain. By the early twenty-first century, digital convergence had accelerated the shift toward end-to-end digitization. From feedback economies to motion-sensing interfaces, social life has been increasingly organized within digitally saturated environments. In contemporary usage, digital technology is often treated as synonymous with digitalization. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) describes digitalization as the process of converting information from analogue to digital form (OECD 2019). Dufva and Dufva (2019) characterize it as the translation of diverse physical or analogue operations into digital data systems. McAfee and Brynjolfsson (2017) identify three principal engines of digitalization: machine learning, platform thinking and crowd-based action. British political scientist Michael Dillon (2000) frames digitalization as the production of information through which the activities of “digital individuals” can be tracked. Building on Selwyn (2019), Dobrinskaya (2021) defines digitalization as the penetration and integration of digital technology into all digitizable domains of social life—encompassing networking, datafication, platforming and algorithmization. In brief, digital technology denotes a family of techniques grounded in binary structures, including networking, platforming, algorithmization, informatization and artificial intelligence.

These digital technologies and technical devices constitute the material foundations of digital society, reshaping its spatial, temporal, and epistemic dimensions. Spatially, digitalization has expanded the boundaries of individuals’ worlds, with digital media becoming a primary channel for communication and interaction. Qiu (2022) describes this as a transition from human-centeredmedia, rooted in localized social systems, to digital-centered media, embedded in globalized networks. Temporally, technical digital generates a new social temporality, which is increasingly structured by digital infrastructures rather than coordinated solely through human interaction. Epistemically, the translation of knowledge into digital form dissolves its material fixity and certainty, producing a dematerialized configuration that allows for accelerated dissemination, detachment from specific time–space contexts, and vastly expanded storage and output capacities. Once digital infrastructures are established, their marginal cost approaches zero, enabling their redeployment across domains such as governance, marketing and social research.

However, understandings of technical digital remain contested. Technical digital encompasses both its material dimensions, embodied in devices and infrastructures, and its non-material dimensions, which organize digital spaces according to binary logic. Within these spaces, the underlying features, functions and embedded assumptions of technological systems often remain opaque to users, who may also be unaware of how these systems shape their behavior. This abstraction underpins the description of digital spaces as virtual—a term that carries two connotations. First, virtual as the counterpart to the real or physical world, and second, as “existing on another plane of reality” (Zheng and He 2004). Since the emergence of the concept of cyberspace, sociological inquiry has interrogated the boundaries and points of friction between virtual and physical spaces as fragmented by digital technologies. In the digital era, there has been a marked movement from “virtual-to-real” in cognition and practice, where emotions, relationships and capital circulating in digital spaces are increasingly recognized as tangible and consequential (Liu and Wen 2022). Nonetheless, digital dualism, the binary framing of online versus offline, virtual versus real, persists in generating tension in understandings of selfhood and environment. Debates continue over whether digital space is a parallel realm, an integral part of the “real world” or an extension of the physical domain.

Value digital:

as symbolic representation of value

Value digital refers to the symbolic representation of value, whereby digital is abstracted and symbolized as various value judgements. It foregrounds the evaluative dimension of digital, encompassing characteristics such as risk, utility and uncertainty. These characteristics form three dimensions that constitute the principal manifestations of value digital called risk digital, utility digital, and uncertainty digital, respectively.

Risk digital denotes the assemblage of risks associated with numerical representations and adopts a critical orientation toward them. In scholarly discourse, it is frequently expressed through metaphors drawn from natural phenomena, such as “digital flood”, “digital torrent” and “digital ocean”. These metaphors operate on two levels. First, they vividly capture the nature of digital as vast, mobile and uncontainable, highlighting the accelerated circulation of numerical entities and the challenges of predicting, controlling and/or constraining them. Furthermore, these metaphors resonate with a broader sociological tendency to conceptualize social phenomena as liquid or fluid, as in Bauman’s (2012) notion of liquid modernity.

Risk digital underscores the tension between technology and society, or more specifically, between technology and humans. This tension fuels distrust and skepticism toward the digital, situating it at the heart of critical constructivist critiques. The concerns surrounding risk digital manifest across multiple levels. At the macro level, it draws attention to structural inequalities. Individuals who, due to age, disability, poverty or other constraints, cannot access or adapt to rapidly evolving digital technologies, face heightened marginalization in the digital society. Similarly, regions with limited or non-existent digital infrastructure are further disadvantaged, deepening both global and regional digital divides. At the micro level, risk digital focuses on the perils of digital surveillance, algorithmic governance and labor control. As digital footprints now permeate nearly every sphere of life, concerns extend beyond privacy to encompass the loss of autonomy over personal data. In the realm of digital labor, the erosion of contractual employment and the expansion of flexible, platform-based work arrangements have produced the figure of the “precarious digital worker” (Roulleau-Berger 2022). Under the constant oversight of platforms and algorithmic systems, these workers may find themselves in a paradoxical condition of “virtual freedom” yet unceasing labor (Liu and Wen 2022). At the micro level, risk digital reveals the detrimental effects of digital technologies on individual subjectivity. It saturates personal identity, fragmenting the self across a series of partial and transient relationships (Gergen 1991: 48–186). Such fragmentation echoes long-standing moral panics from the mid-twentieth century onwards, about the erosion of traditional communities and civic engagement, and the ascendance of self-interested individualism.

Utility digital foregrounds the instrumental and beneficial dimensions of the digital, framing it as both a societal driving force (Suo et al. 2021) and a foundational engine for economic growth and social progress (Zhang 2021). In this perspective, digital technologies are not merely tools but core enablers of transformation across economic, political and personal domains. In the economic sphere, utility digital is embodied in digital economic activities, where digitized knowledge and information operate as primary production factors, modern information networks function as essential carriers, and information and communication technologies serve as structural drivers of growth. For example, rural e-commerce initiatives have injected new vitality into China’s rural economy, expanding market reach and diversifying income streams (Zhang and Qiu 2022). In the world of work, utility digital manifests in the creation of varied online and offline employment opportunities, reducing barriers and mitigating discrimination based on culture, class, gender and/or disability (Wen and Liu 2021). In social governance, digital technologies contribute to the modernization of governance structures through a “comprehensive interconnection” mindset. This approach facilitates collaborative governance by enabling governments, citizens, private enterprises and social organizations to integrate and share data for public decision-making (Ding 2020). At the individual level, utility digital is reflected in the use of digital tools and applications for self-understanding, self-care and lifestyle management, thereby enhancing personal well-being and agency.

Uncertainty digital captures the indeterminate state, function and societal responses associated with digital technologies, adopting a stance that blends caution with necessity. This perspective recognizes two intertwined forms of uncertainty. Objective uncertainty stems from the inherent unpredictability of rapidly evolving technologies, where change is continuous and outcomes are difficult to foresee. Subjective uncertainty arises from the limitations of human cognition and experience in evaluating digital technologies and their functions (Wen and Liu 2021). Unlike risk digital, which frames the digital primarily in terms of potential harm, or utility digital, which emphasizes its benefits, uncertainty digital acknowledges a value position marked by mixed motivations—neither wholly optimistic nor entirely skeptical. Importantly, the uncertainties of digital technologies can cascade into uncertainties in other interconnected domains. For example, the rise of platform-based digital labor has broadened the scope and significance of precarious and indeterminate work arrangements (Wen and Liu 2021). Responding to such uncertainties is itself an uncertain process, as the consequences of any chosen strategy are not fully predictable. Consequently, uncertainty digital calls for approaches rooted in “thinking with care”, attentively engaging with potential unknowns (de la Bellacasa 2017: 16) and “needs-based” planning (Wu and Wen 2022), which grounds responses in practical, context-specific requirements rather than abstract technical possibilities. This dual orientation enables both the anticipation of emergent challenges and the development of adaptive, resilient responses to an ever-changing digital environment.

Action digital:

a social dispositif

for coordinating action

Action digital can be understood as a social dispositif that organizes and steers human activity through the coordinated interplay of actors’ agency and the structuring capacity of digital systems. It operates by constraining, regulating, mobilizing, materializing and intensifying actions via complex computer programs designed around specific rules. Its defining features, such as relationality, interactivity, and practicality, reflect how digital systems are embedded in, and actively shape social life.

From one perspective, human actors exercise agency through the digital. At the collective level, institutions and organizations deploy digital systems to manage operations, facilitate economic transactions and stage social or cultural activities. Examples include using algorithmic moderation to control online public opinion during crises, or deploying real-time data dashboards to enhance public service delivery and drive business innovation. Users also directly participate in shaping these systems—most visibly in personalized recommendation engines, where individual search, browsing and saving patterns feed back into the algorithmic design of content curation. From another perspective, actors operate under the guidance and constraint of digital dispositifs. If a dispositif refers to a mechanism that “makes people act” (Agamben 2007), the digital is a social dispositif for coordinating action. Here, digital dispositifs prescribe “grammars of action” and “formats of action” (e.g., the structured choices of “follow”, “save” or “share” buttons), which not only enable specific forms of interaction but also render those interactions visible, measurable and amenable to intervention. In this way, the digital becomes a soft-power mechanism; it does not compel behavior through coercion but subtly channels and shapes it by structuring the environment in which actions take place. With the rise of big data, algorithms themselves increasingly assume the role of non-human agents of power, capable of making consequential decisions, such as loan approvals or automated sanctions, without direct human oversight. Action digital thus captures both the agency-enhancing and agency-conditioning dimensions of the digital environment, making it a critical concept for understanding how power and coordination operate in the digital society.

Furthermore, action digital structures and sustains interactive practices among subjects, enabling relationships to be maintained, transformed and newly forged in digitally mediated environments. These practices are enacted through information actions, such as the flow of messages, images, videos and other symbolic exchanges, that traverse geographic boundaries and facilitate mutual recognition (Chen 2021). In this process, individuals not only encounter the presence of others but also rearticulate their presence in relational contexts (Kim 2001). Such interactions are embedded in everyday life rather than existing in any separate digital sphere; they draw on ubiquitous digital media to sustain intersubjectivity. From a symbolic interactionist perspective, the formation and maintenance of relationships in digital environments evoke the metaphor of “community.” Castells (2001: 127) observes that in complex societies, “the major transformation of sociability…took place with the substitution of networks for spatial communities as major forms of sociability”. However, in the contemporary digital condition, these so-called “communities” differ from traditional spatial ones; they are fluid, rhythmic and manipulable assemblages of individual users. In digital communities, sociability emerges from the continuous deployment and reciprocal feedback among user actions, circulating content and selective self-disclosure. This fluidity allows connections to form and dissolve with relative ease, while also subjecting them to the structuring logics of platforms and algorithms, which govern visibility, interaction patterns, and the rhythms of collective engagement.

Digital interaction practices also exert a profound influence on self-definition and identity formation. On one hand, digital technology systems and online environments provide the structural and symbolic scaffolding for self-presentation. In digital spaces, self-presentation is not merely the projection of a pre-existing identity but a subjective practice of self-writing, oriented toward explicit self-focused aims such as “withdrawing into oneself, getting in touch with oneself, living with oneself, relying on oneself, benefiting from and enjoying oneself” (Foucault 1997: 211). Through these acts, the self is actively constituted rather than simply displayed, emerging as though it predated the performance itself. On the other hand, digital interaction fosters fluid and fragmented identities, a response to the “scene fragmentation” inherent in contemporary digital life. As Mead (1972) observes, “(t)here are all sorts of different selves answering to all sorts of different social reactions” (Ibid, 142). This multiplicity requires actors to navigate and negotiate disparate identity fragments across multiple online and offline contexts, sustaining coherence while engaging with diverse networks, platforms and audiences. In this sense, digital environments both enable and demand identity elasticity, making the self a dynamic assemblage shaped by continual interactional adjustments.

Finally, action digital constructs a practice field with a distinct social-situational character—a relational configuration imbued with specific gravity that acts upon all objects and actors entering it (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 17). In such a field, action is both coordinated and validated. Within social media platforms, gender, work, race, class, and power relations are intricately woven together and remain fluid. Actors in the field of digital practices assume a wide array of roles and engage in diverse activities of different natures, including those with social and entertainment, educational, occupational, organizational, political, economic, and cultural dimensions. The legitimacy of digital platforms as a social situation renders the digital practice field a field of inquiry. In this sense, research is no longer anchored in offline validation; the digital field itself is already a site of inquiry. Researchers can observe and participate within the field, collecting and analyzing native digital data (Wen and Liu 2023). For instance, the concept of “online fields” has been proposed to describe how various types of content producers and consumers co-create distinctive power relations in digital space (Zillien and Marr 2013: 55). In this way, action digital not only coordinates behavior but organizes and legitimizes the very conditions under which social life is enacted, observed and understood.

Cultural digital:

as a fluid cultural situation

Cultural digital here, refers to a fluid cultural situation composed of diverse cultural forms and emotional expressions. At its core lies processes of cultural digitalization and cultural economization, centered on the production, reception, circulation and transformation of culture. It foregrounds the cultural dimensions of the digital, emphasizing its fluidity, emotional resonance and market-oriented characteristics.

Cultural digitalization has accelerated the circulation of multiple cultural forms within broader cultural situations. Forms such as narratives, aesthetics, poetics, games and the moral–ethical dimensions of everyday life have gained unprecedented opportunities for replication and dissemination, producing a combinatorial topology marked by overproduction and rapid flow. In this process, objects, places, temporalities, subjects and collectives are no longer understood merely as means to an end; rather, they are endowed with cultural value, becoming integral to cultural life, particularly at aesthetic and ethical levels. Moreover, this cultural domain in digital format has been transformed from a bounded subsystem into a global “superculture”. Within this superculture, virtually anything can be rendered as culture—from the Analects of Confucius to industrial stools or from traditional educational institutions to short-form platform videos. In other words, the cultural situation of the digital age integrates a highly fluid and expansive cultural market.

Furthermore, emotion is a central component of cultural digital. Emotions are not solely psychological phenomena but are also cultural and social constructs, expressed in specific, direct, yet culturally and socially mediated relationships (Illouz 2007: 3). Images, texts and sounds circulating in digital form are not merely replicable, repeatable and durable streams of information; they are also cultural and aesthetic objects imbued with emotional intensity. Culture, in the sense of forms of content and practice, holds a comparative advantage over information in the marketplace of attention and value, which lies in its capacity to evoke complex emotions. New media platforms such as WeChat public accounts (微信公眾號), Weibo (微博) and Douyin (抖音) in China, for example, not only disseminate information but also generate continuous “current controversies”. While cultural digital offers participants narrative value, it simultaneously stimulates emotional and moral engagement, filling affective gaps while also disciplining recipients through immersive emotional experience. This dynamic (re)shapes emotional connections in otherwise non-intimate relationships and exerts formative influence on emotional practices within intimate relationships.

With respect to emotional connections in non-intimate relationships, social media platforms and their built-in incentive mechanisms provide substantial support for fostering affective bonds between individuals who are otherwise unacquainted. By posting distinctive self-narratives, such as vlogs (video logs) or “outfit of the day” (OOTD) content, to name a few, users can attract significant emotional rewards in the form of “likes”, positive commentary and public recognition from strangers. Such expressions of affirmation become a potent source of positive emotions, including happiness, satisfaction and contentment, thereby imbuing online engagement with enhanced meaning and personal value. In terms of emotional shaping within intimate relationships, Illouz (2007: 84), in her study of online dating platforms, observes that digital protocols have profoundly transformed the dynamics of romantic life. The high volume of online interactions enables users to send identical, standardized messages to multiple potential partners, rendering the process akin to telemarketing or candidate management. The resultant control and management of emotions, together with the digitalization and algorithmic organization of intimate encounters, demonstrates that emotions are being produced, circulated and reconfigured on a massive scale within a much broader cultural digital environment.

The cultural situation in the digital age is also inherently fluid. In cultural sociology, culture is understood as a matter of individual experience, acquiring meaning and value through the relationship between individuals and broader processes of socio-cultural development. Prior to the digital era, cultural participation was typically tied to specific environments like attending a lecture in a classroom or watching a film in a cinema. By contrast, in the digital age, individuals can access digitalized knowledge and information anytime and anywhere through smartphones and other portable devices. While not all cultural practices are digital, virtually all non-digital practices are now generally directly or indirectly connected to the digital ecosystem.

The self-production of culture has thus undergone a transformation, enabling participation by individuals who are unable to acquire cultural competencies through traditional pathways such as schools and institutions (Flichy 2017: 388). Direct market incentives or indirect subsidies from intellectual property are no longer prerequisites for producing cultural or knowledge products. Instead, individuals can create and disseminate cultural works in digital formats purely out of creative passion, personal interest or a desire to share. Practices such as writing, photography and video editing have become integral to individual projects of self-construction, enhancing both the experience of and participation in online cultural life. Digital cultural communities, such as YouTube, BiliBili (嗶哩嗶哩) and Little Red Book (小紅書), operate as fluid learning environments, where participants acquire a wide range of content, from professional training to hobby-based knowledge. Similarly, traditional educational institutions have become more fluid by engaging with digital platforms, primarily due to the widespread adoption of remote teaching programmes in schools.

Moreover, this fluid cultural situation also constitutes a domain for the circulation and transformation of culture, emotions and capital, thereby guiding processes of cultural economization. Illouz conceptualizes “emotional capitalism” as a culture in which emotional and economic discourses and practices mutually shape one another, rendering emotions a central dimension of economic behavior (Illouz 2007: 5). The principal advantage of cultural economization lies in the emotional market—that is, public visibility and recognition. The public retains the capacity to decide whether to be influenced by a product and whether to attribute value to it. In the digital cultural sphere, information and knowledge, emotions and interactions, and attention and value, jointly constitute an emergent capital market. Here, cultural forms and processes, such as knowledge production, affective engagement, participation and interaction—are not ends in themselves but components of a new economic norm.

Digital platforms, which once served primarily as vehicles for social networking and the dissemination of knowledge and information, now operate at the forefront of “new capitalism” and platform capitalism (Fisher 2010; Srnicek 2017), that seeks to transform social life into a commercialized space. In this context, emotions are no longer private affective meanings and attachments accrued after the purchase of a commodity; rather, they have become entities to be evaluated, bargained over, quantified and commodified (Illouz 2007). The public is no longer positioned as a pre-constituted, passive consumer, but actively shapes, shares, and reconstructs the cultural content of digital media. Cultural commodities are not simply objects to “be used”, but also function as cultural activities and events. Consumers thus seek them not solely for utility, but to satisfy emotional needs.

A highly visible “video game event” in China exemplifies the circulation and conversion between culture, emotion and capital. Video games constitute not only immersive spaces for aesthetic and narrative engagement, but are also highly affective collective activities and events. On November 7th, 2021, in the early hours of the morning, the Chinese Edward Gaming (EDG) team defeated the Korean DAMWON Kia (DK) team 3–2 in the S11 League of Legends World Championship. While initially attracting attention within the Esports community, the victory rapidly became a nationwide cultural event, triggering collective celebration and generating massive digital traffic. Beyond marking a sporting achievement, the event functioned as an emotional expression of national pride, while simultaneously signaling a new wave of capital investment and market expansion in the Chinese Esports industry. In sum, under conditions of cultural digitalization, cultural and emotional products created by both professional and amateur producers are entering an unprecedented phase of monetization and economization.

Normative digital:

as normative social requirements

Normative digital refers to the normative social requirements that define standards of social value and individual significance. In a broader sense, the digital has itself has become a new form of “normative judgment” by naming society in ways that imply a digital society is inherently more advanced than that preceding it. Normative digital foregrounds the normativity of the digital, characterized by quantification, stratification and naming.

Normative digital reinforces the comprehensive quantification of society and its subjects. Quantification constitutes the foundation of the digital’s normative essence. On one level, the online and offline activity trajectories of both individual and collective actors are recorded, stored and managed in digital form. On another, individuals actively participate in self-quantification and self-management by voluntarily providing personal data to digital devices. This process extends beyond the measurement of external behaviors to the quantification of intrinsic qualities. For instance, online dating platforms routinely score individuals based on personal traits, such as personality, hobbies and preferences, and calculate compatibility with potential partners. This practice exemplifies what Espeland (2001: 64) terms “commensuration”, whereby qualitative differences are converted into quantitative magnitudes through shared measurement scales.

Additionally, normative digital concerns the construction of a new hierarchy of values and norms. The principle of digital communicationcomes first has become a widely accepted habit, whereby any message, notification or prompt from the digital sphere elicits an immediate user response. Disconnection from the network can generate a sense of social isolation, as if one’s ties to society have been severed. For the generation of “digital natives”, who have grown up within digital technological environments, the process of socialization is already embedded within an order governed by normative digital. Within this order, individuals are adept at using digital tools for self-expression and interactive communication, becoming accustomed to documenting and experiencing life through photographs and videos on mobile devices, and growing habituated to shopping across multiple online platforms.

As a result, ontological security increasingly hinges on one’s capacity to adapt to a digital environment and to acquire a digital habitus. Normative digital plays a decisive role in defining which behaviors, activities and outcomes are deemed appropriate or normal, and which fall outside the norm. For example, it has already begun to shape and define concepts of risk and safety, such as “ill-health,” “poor sleep quality,” and “insufficient daily exercise.” Beyond setting such standards, normative digital also prescribes methods of remediation, often through the adoption of further digital technologies and devices. Patients without access to medical facilities, for instance, may be advised to rely on digital self-monitoring tools for health management. Over time, these norms become internalized as conditions that guide thought and action. The concept of surveillance realism (Dencik and Cable 2017) captures this phenomenon; the public comes to accept digital surveillance as an inevitable feature of reality, and even when aware of its injustice, peoples’ capacity for resistance or critical reflection remains constrained.

Furthermore, normative digital is setting new standards for social stratification, with at least two key implications. On the one hand, within digital activities themselves, there is a growing trend toward internal differentiation among participants. A distinctive feature of digital labor is the pronounced internal hierarchy and class disparities that can exist even among workers occupying the same nominal position (Wen and Liu 2021). These differences are shaped by demographic and sociological factors such as age, educational attainment, income and social capital. On the other hand, normative digital functions as a benchmark for both internal and external stratification within and across national contexts. Digital resources and competencies intersect with traditional markers of inequality (such as wealth, power and prestige), thereby reinforcing disparities in health, education, social welfare and civic participation. Such inequalities manifest not only between urban and rural areas, across regions and among citizens, but also between countries and regions, exacerbating patterns of global digital inequality.

Normative digital also requires individuals to engage in processes of self-shaping. As Qiu (2022) observes, a defining feature of digital society is the cultivation of “individual societies”, wherein people increasingly conform to digital norms. While knowledge of computers and other digital technologies provides practical skills, its broader significance lies in enabling individuals to construct and present themselves as competent members of a digitally normative society. Research on self-tracking practices and the quantified-self movement illustrates how digital self-monitoring, via applications and devices, supports and encourages alignment with the ideal of “digital citizenship” (Housley and Smith 2017; Isin and Ruppert 2020). To accelerate the standardization of citizens to meet these norms, the cultivation of digital literacy has become a core component of both school-based and lifelong education. The Action Plan for Enhancing Digital Literacy and Skills for All, issued by the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission of China in November 2021, underscores the importance of embedding digital education within schools and establishing a comprehensive lifelong digital learning system.

Internationally, efforts to assess and develop digital competence reflect similar priorities. For instance, researchers at the Norwegian Centre for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Education have designed a Digital Competence Test to measure disparities among secondary school students (Hatlevik et al. 2015). In sociological research, digital technology is conceptualized as both a normative resource and a developmental capability, particularly through the concept of digital capital. Seale et al. (2015) employ a “Digital Capital Framework” to examine the relationship between disabled students in higher education and their access to, and use of, digital technology. In a Bourdieu-inspired approach, Ignatow and Robinson (2017) conceptualize digital capital as a secondary form of capital, whereby an individual’s stock of digital capital corresponds to the scope, scale, and complexity of their online practices.

Discussion

and future directions

The conceptualization of the digital as a research object is undergoing continual evolution. This is partly because the digital has become an undeniable social fact, and partly because the social sciences seek to respond to the empirical and theoretical demands of the digital age in order to capture the broader contours of a digital society. While sociologists recognize that the theoretical framing of the digital cannot bypass its technological dimensions, such as digitization, networking, platformization and algorithmization, they also endeavor to explore, disrupt and de-naturalize the interconnections between the digital, society and technology. In this sense, the digital is not merely a technological tool; it constitutes a proactive, fluid, machine-based social configuration and (in)forms part of the social environment that shapes interactions embedded within broader social systems. As Horst and Miller (2020) observe, digital technology, like all material culture, “is becoming a constitutive part of what makes us human” (ibid, 4).

This article systematically analyzes five perspectives on “the digital”: technical digital, value digital, action digital, cultural digital, and normative digital (see Table 1). These perspectives function both as sociological interpretations of the digital and as conceptual tools for research. They not only enable researchers to examine the digital through a social lens but also invite reflection on society through the prism of the digital. Differentiating these perspectives avoids essentialist positions rooted solely in technological determinism and facilitates the identification of open, socially embedded logics within digital society. Moreover, clarifying their epistemological distinctions, across dimensions of meaning, ideology and problem domains, can sharpen the analytical precision and interpretive depth of digital research.

These five perspectives overlap, are complementary and mutually reinforcing, together forming an integrated framework for understanding the deep meaning of the digital. Technical digital constitutes the precondition for the emergence of the other four perspectives, directly informing the value, action, cultural, and normative dimensions detailed in this paper. Value digital represents the evaluative outcome of the combined effects of all other perspectives. Crucially, the valuation of the digital is not determined solely by technological advancement; more sophisticated digital technologies do not necessarily generate more favorable assessments. Rather, the complexity of the digital arises from the interplay of technical, cultural, action and normative dimensions. Action digital serves as the practical foundation for the development of all other perspectives. Without the widespread digital practices of individuals, groups and organizations, cultural digital could not flourish, normative digital would lack both objects and carriers, and technical digital would be deprived of real-world feedback for its advancement. Cultural digital, in turn, stimulates the evolution of the other perspectives; it fosters innovation in technical digital, enriches the content of action digital, provides dynamic contexts for normative digital, and offers points of reference for evaluating digital’s value. Finally, normative digital articulates the normative requirements that govern the development of the other perspectives. It regulates technical digital, shapes value digital, guides action digital and establishes digital norms within cultural contexts.

The five perspectives detailed in this paper form a network-like configuration that reflects a process of progressively deepening our understanding of the digital. This configuration should not be misconstrued as a hierarchical arrangement; such an assumption risks lapsing into “technocentric” thinking or patterns of “technological exaltation”. It does not constitute a layered system with technical digital at the core, nor a pyramidal hierarchy with technical digital as the foundation. Rather, these perspectives collectively constitute a network characterized by openness, relationality, interweaving and dynamism. Openness facilitates the interaction and cross-fertilization of diverse conceptualizations of the digital, drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives to foster knowledge integration and innovation. Relationality denotes the complex, multi-directional interactions among different conceptualizations; these connections are neither unidirectional nor merely bilateral but operate bidirectionally and multilaterally. Interweaving refers to the points of connection and overlaps among perspectives, which both enrich and systematize the knowledge base. Examining these intersections enables researchers to delineate problem domains and generate new insights. For example, the intersection of action digital and normative digital provides a lens through which to analyze the practices of digital workers within specific work environments, and to interrogate whether normative digital has contributed to the emergence of a “digital working class”. Dynamism essentially captures the constantly evolving nature of this conceptual network, in which new dimensions of understanding will inevitably emerge and take their place as key nodes.

The five perspectives each delineate distinct substantive problem domains and, in doing so, open new directions for future research. The core problem domain of technical digital concerns the subjective–objective analysis of human–technology interactions. Key areas of inquiry include: examining the diverse modes and contents of human engagement with digital technologies; analyzing the pathways and mechanisms through which digital technologies penetrate and shape everyday life; mapping the power dynamics embedded within digital algorithms; clarifying the scope, nature and degree of impact exerted by digital technologies across multiple dimensions of human society; undertaking theoretical and empirical investigations into the ethical relationships between digital technologies and human actors; and finally, interrogating the intersections of digital and non-digital spaces, as well as the frictions, tensions and disruptions that emerge at these boundaries.

The core problem domain of value digital concerns the systematic examination of the value dimensions of the digital. This entails engaging with multiple value orientations: critically exposing and reflecting on the risks and adverse consequences of digital technologies and their uses; providing comprehensive accounts of their utility; identifying the patterns through which digital utility manifests across different spheres of social construction; and considering the uncertainties inherent in digital processes, with a view to formulating action-oriented guidelines to address such contingencies.

The core problem domain of action digital focuses on interpreting the diverse digital practices of a range of actors and the complex relationships within and between them. These actors include, but are not limited to, leisure users, workers, creators, operators, organizations and governing bodies. Central areas of inquiry include: documenting and classifying different types of digital practices and analyzing their underlying logics, patterns of action, and organizational models; examining the interactions and relationships between actors, and between actors and objects, across various digital practices; tracing the presentation, positioning and transformation of individual identities within digital environments; and investigating the mechanisms by which digital technological systems coordinate and sustain such practices. In doing so, the perspective of action digital calls for the establishment of a coherent logic and continuity between digital and non-digital spaces, forming an integrated explanatory framework.

A central concern of the cultural digital domain centers on the processes of cultural digitization and cultural economization. Key research foci include: elucidating how digital cultural situations operate; identifying the constituent elements of such situations and their specific functions; mapping the patterns of circulation and conversion through which culture, emotion and capital interact in the digital economy; analyzing the defining features of emergent forms of capitalism—such as emotional capitalism, digital capitalism, and platform capitalism; interrogating the legitimacy of new configurations linking culture to economy and emotion to economy; as well as exploring prospective development paths for cultural digitization and cultural economization in the contemporary era.

Normative digital involves examining the normative capacity of digital technologies and their significance in processes of social construction. This includes addressing a sequence of interrelated research questions. How does digital technology facilitate the normalization and institutionalization of actors at multiple levels, from individuals to organizations? What conditions underpin its legitimacy? To what extent, and in what wa...