Moving Pictures: Notes for a Visual Sociology in the Digital Age

This paper starts with an analysis dedicated to the state of the art of visual sociology to understand its historical evolution, with a specific focus on the reality of studies produced in the Italian and American fields. It concentrates on the age-old problem of defining this approach poised between theoretical discipline and research methodology. Great attention will also be paid to visual sociology as a tool for analysing a social reality increasingly suspended between real life and digital identity. Finally, to account for the advent of the digital society and the pervasiveness of digital tools for sharing images, an attempt to conceptualize images relating to the use of social media will be made explicit.