Internet, Big Data, and Digital Platforms: Political Economy-Communication-Regulation A Short Introduction to the Special Issue

In the introduction to this special issue of the Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, the editors outline the issue's thematic focus and topics. From different perspectives-empirical, theoretical, and historically reconstructive-the contributions deal with the organizational, socioeconomic, and regulatory characteristics of the platform-based internet; analyze its effects on public and political communication; examine the life cycles and peculiarities of openly structured online communities; and discuss key methodological challenges for empirical social research associated with the rapidly growing body of digital data (often generated in private-sector contexts). Taken together, the featured articles provide an in-depth overview of essential fields of current sociological internet research, while resisting the temptation of relying on catchy trends or of drawing hasty generalizations on a narrow empirical basis.