Now more than ever: CITAMS's contributions to a pandemic society

Abstract

Each year the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association curates a special issue highlighting sociological contributions to technology and media studies. That tradition continued in 2020, even as everything else changed. The articles included in this year’s special issue were mostly written pre-Pandemic, yet their implications seem amplified by the current historical moment. With a globe gone remote, mediated communication rose from a specialist academic subject to an acute social consideration, intersecting with and illuminating basic sociological concerns about inequality, the nature of work, family life, and the compounding effects of race, class, gender, and sexuality as they interplay with social and material conditions. These topics are all reflected in the articles from this year’s issue, now inflected with a post-Pandemic reality that shows insights from CITAMS are needed now, more than ever.