When people first hear the word “critical” in an academic context, it is easy to assume it means the same thing everywhere.

Critical thinking is the art of making clear, reasoned judgements based on interpreting, understanding, applying and synthesising evidence gathered from observation, reading and experimentation.

Burns, T., & Sinfield, S. (2016) Essential Study Skills: The Complete Guide to Success at University(4th ed.) London: SAGE, p94.

Actually, critical thinking gives you the tools to take apart an argument, it is about asking whether claims are logical, whether the reasoning holds up, and whether sources are reliable. Every students are encouraged to use critical thinking to avoid error and to reach sound conclusions.

While critical approaches in the social sciences are different. It allows you to understand and explore the reasons and relations behind the phenomenon. Critical approaches focus on wider structures of power, inequality, and ideology that shape knowledge and everyday life (Lupton, 2015). For example, while critical thinking about whether using Instagram lowers girls’ self-esteem, a critical approach in sociology would ask: why Instagram consistently shows certain “perfect bodies,” to female users, who decides what appears and how these images shape girls’ sense of self. So critical approaches not only find what happens, but also study why it happens and who controls it (Marres, 2017).

About Critical approach

The origin of the "critical approach" can be traced back to Marx, he believed critique would reveal fundamental truths about human social condition and research can challenge authority and promote liberation. After that, the Frankfurt School developed this viewpoint and formed the concept of "critical theory", which expanded critique to culture, rationality, and ideology (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1972; Habermas, 1971). The later "critical approaches" expanded the spirit of the Frankfurt School to a broader range of social sciences. It not only inherited the idea of Marx and the Frankfurt School (like focusing on power and inequality), but also absorbed various directions and theories such as feminism, queer theory and so on. So, the core of the critical approach is to focus on power and explore the power relations behind social issues.

Mean or rude? Definitely not!

In daily life, critical discussions or refutations of others' viewpoints are regarded as impolite and rude. However, in critical approaches, criticism is the core, but it is not directed at individuals; instead, it is aimed at structures, systems and power relations. For instance, in the example I mentioned earlier, studying the impact of Instagram on female self-esteem is an act of critiquing the algorithm and the social structure, rather than criticizing a specific individual woman. Critique is about questioning systems, not attacking people.

Sociological imagination

The sociological imagination, a concept developed by C. Wright Mills (2000), who defined sociological imagination as "the awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society." When using sociological imagination, people try to understand the circumstances in their own lives by observing the wider social environment.

Critical approaches engage the sociological imagination by questioning dominant interpretations and connecting individual experiences to wider structures of power. Just as Giulia Cavalcanti wrote in her blog about her feelings regarding women's shaving practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sociological imagination enables people to break free from limited frameworks and place our perspectives and horizons in the broader social and historical development.

In sociology, "critical" does not mean being rude in speech. It refers to asking more appropriate questions - such as who benefits from it, who is excluded, and why things are the way they are. Critical approaches enable us to go further and connect our daily lives with broader social forces. With the imagination of sociology, we can understand that even something as ordinary as browsing Instagram is closely related to broader political power and cultural issues. Overall, being critical—this skill is undoubtedly very useful and worth continuing to pursue.

 

References

Burns, T., & Sinfield, S. (2012). Essential study skills: The complete guide to success at university. Sage publications.

Giulia, C. (2020, August 7). I haven’t shaved since lockdown. Edinburgh Decameron: Lockdown Sociology at Work. https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/ed-decameron/i-havent-shaved-since-lockdown/

Horkheimer, M., Adorno, T. W., & Noeri, G. (2002). Dialectic of enlightenment. Stanford University Press.

Lupton, D. (2015). Digital sociology. Routledge.

Marres, N. (2017). Digital sociology: The reinvention of social research. Polity Press.

Mills, C. W. (2000). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.

 

Oct 3, 2025

It feels like the perfect space to step back and ask bigger questions

Back in my undergraduate studies in journalism, I was drawn to data journalism because it showed me how numbers and visuals could change the way people understood stories and news.  At the same time, I noticed how much digital platforms shaped what stories were told in the first place. How do digital technology influence our everyday choices? Who gets seen and who doesn’t? And what kinds of power relations are built into platforms and data systems? What kinds of social inequalities get reproduced or challenged in digital spaces? That is reasons I’m interested in Digital Sociology.

Selwyn(2019) points out, digital sociology pushing us outside of our comfort zones and encouraging us to think in provocative, promiscuous and pragmatic ways.

So for me, digital sociology is not only about data, but also about observing how digital technologies penetrate into our society and everything we do in our daily lives, and exploring how to understand all of this.

At the beginning of this learn journey

The topics which caught my attention immediately were Week 8 on identity and Week 9 on colonialism. I am curious about how people build and perform their identities online, and the keywords for Week 8—social construction, digitally mediated communication, and selfies—felt really close to things I notice every day. I find it fascinating how something as ordinary as posting a photo can also be a way of shaping how others see us, and even how we see ourselves.
Week 9 stood out for a different reason. The focus on decolonial computing, divestment, and genocide sounded intense. It made me think about how technology isn’t neutral. This connects to why I wanted to study Digital Sociology in the first place: not just to understand the fun or everyday parts of digital life, but also to face the bigger political and ethical questions behind the systems we use all the time.

The idea of my own research

For my research idea, currently, I am interested in the related issues concerning "algorithmic systems & recommendation algorithmic".

It is impossible to separate today’s internet from algorithms whether is using it for entertainment or for receiving information. They don’t just organize content — they also shape our attention and our sense of what voices are worth hearing. This makes me wonder: If these algorithms were privately designed within the existing social structure, would they eventually reproduce the inequalities that we observe and experience in society?

The thing I'm looking forward to

During this year, I’d like to try out different digital research methods, especially want to personally participate in the field studies.

One of the things that makes digital sociology interesting is that it doesn’t just look at numbers or data — it also pays attention to people’s true lived experiences with technology. Field studies and qualitative research are really important here, because algorithms, platforms, and devices don’t exist in isolation. They’re always part of people’s everyday routines, relationships, and identities. For example, two people might be using the same app, but their experiences can be very different depending on their background and culture.

This means moving far beyond easy distinctions between “online” and “offline” and to understanding the deeply entangled relationships between technology, media, bodies, and data. -- Kate O.J., Nick P, &Karen G.

Qualitative methods help us see these differences, and understand how digital systems actually feel and function in practice. This matters because purely quantitative approaches which is difficult to truly understand the underlying meaning and the social processes. I believe that studying people's subjective experiences, meaning construction, and social relationships largely relies on qualitative research.

I hope this course can give me both the theoretical foundation and the practical methods to study these kinds of questions. I'd like to say this year is a chance to explore and learn more.

Sep 27, 2025