Table of Contents

• The Internet as a Social Space
• Identity and Self-Presentation Online
• Power, Surveillance, and Inequality
• The Internet and Social Movements
• Everyday Life in the Digital Age
• Methodological Considerations
• Conclusion

The internet has become an integral aspect of contemporary social life, transforming how individuals interact, form communities, access information, and engage in political, economic, and cultural activities. While often understood through technological or economic lenses, the internet is fundamentally a social phenomenon. This article offers a sociological introduction to the internet, exploring its implications for social structure, identity, power, and everyday life. It is designed to provide undergraduate students with a foundational understanding of how sociologists conceptualise and study the internet within broader social contexts.

Sociologists regard the internet not as an external or neutral technological development but as a deeply embedded part of modernity. It is a dynamic, contested, and evolving domain that both reflects and refracts the structures, contradictions, and inequalities present in offline society. The digital realm is not a separate space but an extension of the social world, entangled with the material conditions of late capitalism, the complexities of globalisation, and the postmodern fragmentation of identity.

The Internet as a Social Space

The internet is not merely a tool for communication or information exchange. It represents a social infrastructure that reshapes how we experience space, time, community, and interaction. It enables the formation of new forms of sociality while simultaneously transforming existing ones. Sociologists study the internet as a space where norms are generated, contested, and negotiated in real time.

Virtual Communities and Network Society

The emergence of virtual communities highlights the internet’s capacity to construct meaningful social bonds beyond geographic constraints. These communities may be organised around shared interests, political ideologies, cultural practices, or affective attachments. Their existence challenges traditional sociological concepts of community rooted in physical co-presence.

• Network society: Manuel Castells’ influential concept describes a shift from traditional, place-bound societies to societies organised around digital networks. In this model, the flow of information becomes the dominant organising principle, with implications for work, identity, and governance.
• Social capital online: The internet can enhance social capital by facilitating connections and knowledge exchange. However, it can also produce echo chambers and reinforce homophily—social sorting based on similarity—that limits exposure to diverse perspectives.
• New forms of solidarity: Digital technologies can foster new solidarities that are affective, issue-based, and transnational. These forms of connection can be fleeting or enduring, and often blur the boundaries between public and private, formal and informal association.

Identity and Self-Presentation Online

The internet has profoundly altered the conditions under which identities are constructed, performed, and recognised. In digital spaces, the self is no longer a fixed entity but a dynamic, fragmented, and performative process. Identity becomes a matter of strategic presentation and algorithmic visibility.

Goffman and the Presentation of Self

Drawing on Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical model, online interactions can be understood as performances in a complex stage environment. Social media profiles, curated timelines, and avatars act as semiotic resources individuals use to manage impressions.

• Front stage/back stage: On platforms like Instagram or TikTok, users navigate complex distinctions between public persona and private self. The pressure to perform a desirable version of the self often leads to hyper-curation and emotional labour.
• Authenticity vs. performativity: While digital culture prizes “authenticity,” it simultaneously rewards performativity. The result is a paradox: the more one tries to be “real,” the more one’s self-presentation is mediated by digital aesthetics and algorithmic feedback.

Fragmented Selves and Algorithmic Shaping

Individuals exist across multiple platforms, each with its own norms, affordances, and expectations. This fragmentation of selfhood invites both creative expression and existential tension. Moreover, algorithms do not merely reflect user behavior; they actively participate in shaping it.

• Data selves: The data trails individuals leave behind form algorithmic profiles that influence what content they see, whom they interact with, and how they are perceived.
• Platform conditioning: The affordances and design of platforms—likes, shares, filters—shape how users express themselves and what kinds of behaviors are incentivised or penalised.

Power, Surveillance, and Inequality

While the internet offers new forms of participation and access, it also intensifies existing social hierarchies and introduces novel mechanisms of control. Digital infrastructures are infused with power relations that shape who can speak, who is heard, and under what conditions.

Digital Surveillance and Datafication

The internet is saturated with surveillance. From cookies and tracking pixels to facial recognition and behavioral analytics, digital users are constantly being observed, categorised, and profiled. Surveillance is no longer limited to states but extends to corporations and even to peer networks.

• Panopticism online: Foucault’s notion of the panopticon is amplified in digital contexts, where surveillance becomes decentralised, ambient, and algorithmic. Users become complicit in their own surveillance through self-tracking and content production.
• Platform power: Platforms such as Google, Meta, and Amazon do not simply host content—they shape the very conditions of visibility and intelligibility. Their algorithmic governance affects everything from news consumption to job opportunities.
• Predictive analytics: Increasingly, data is used not just to understand behavior, but to predict and influence future actions. This raises profound ethical questions about autonomy and consent.

Inequality and the Digital Divide