The Crisis of Sociology and the Revival of Critical Theory in New Media Studies: Paths and Perspectives

For several years now the sociological debate has being sharing the perception of an internal crisis of identity of the discipline that has become almost exclusively empirical and descriptive, thus making marginal other search paths. This drift has effectively sidelined the critical soul of sociologal studies that characterized its classic authors (Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel). In this contest New Media Studies represents the exception since from the beginning they have become a fertile ground for the application of critical theory. The paper analyzes the reasons of this exception and speculates that this is mainly due to the centrality that the user holds in the environment of Web 2.0, which results in unexpected possibilities of cultural resistance on the part of the subject. These reflections have been developed specifically within the tradition of Cultural and New Media Studies. This contribution would also look at other models of critical sociological matrix. Some of these approaches have already found application in the study of new media, such as, for example, the issues of privacy and surveillance which are analyzed in the light of the thought of Michel Foucault about the microphysics of power. Other approaches vice versa could be usefully applied in the investigation of the specificity of the communicative dynamics of social networks. We will, in particular, consider the phenomenological analysis of Schutz and Goffman's study of the Forms of Talk. A further enrichment of the critical theory in the study of new media could also come from the classic anthropological studies on the gift (Durkheim, Mauss, Malinowki) and in particular from the category of the "poisoned gift".