COMPUTER APPLICATIONS IN SOCIOLOGY‘‘sociology’’ and found 750,000 instances. Two
years earlier a search yielded only 250,000. Soci-
ology is indeed rapidly building its presence
on the Web.
The Internet and the Web are often described
as a medium of communication because e-mail,
electronic conferencing, online chats (synchro-
nous discussion), groupware, and data exchange
imply social interaction. Another major metaphor
of the Web is that of a database for information
search and retrieval. However, new roles are emerg-
ing for the Web. For the individual, the Web has
become an important ‘‘presentation of self,’’ an
opportunity for publishing personal and profes-
sional resumes and other such information. For
the organization, the Web has become an opportu-
nity for advertising, recruiting, communicating
with the public, and conducting commerce itself.
The rapid proliferation of personal Web sites in
the form of various home pages suggests that
many now see the Web primarily as a medium for
personal and organizational impression management.
An appendix to this article provides a number
of sources of sociological activity and information
on the Internet, especially the Web. Not only does
the appendix serve as a resource for information
about sociology, but it also portrays the diverse,
complex state of the institutionalization of sociolo-
gy on the Web.
In the next few years the Web and its technolo-
gies will offer many new opportunities for con-
ducting research. Already there are software pack-
ages developed for Web-assisted surveys and other
types of data collection. The amount of data accu-
mulating on the Web is enormous. And the graphi-
cal content of the Web is indeed a challenge to
sociologists conducting computerized content
analyses. The pace of these new developments will
continue to challenge sociologists to not only to
stay current with the new tools for research but to
conduct research on the rapidly growing cultures
of the Internet.
Publications on Sociological Computing. The
primary source for articles on social science com-
puter applications is the Social Science Computer
Review, a quarterly publication of Sage Publica-
tions, Inc., which also regularly offers book and
software reviews. Other relevant software reviews
periodically appear in such journals as Educational
and Psychological Measurement, the Journal of Mar-
keting Research, The American Statistician, and Simu-
lation and Games. In addition, JAI Press publishes
an occasional series volume on ‘‘Computers and
the Social Sciences.’’In the late 1980s, the American Sociological
Association (ASA) formed a ‘‘Section on Micro-
computing.’’ Over 350 sociologists joined this new
section in 1990, making it the fastest-growing new
section in the history of the ASA. The section
publishes a quarterly newsletter and organizes
sessions at annual meetings. In 1993, the section
name was officially changed to ‘‘Sociology and
Computers.’’ A regular newsletter called SCAN
(Sociology and Computers: A Newsletter) is published
by members.Another indicator of growing involvement in
computing was the first annual conference, ‘‘Com-
puting in the Social Sciences,’’ held in 1990 at
Williamsburg, Virginia. From this conference
emerged a professional association, the Social Sci-
ence Computing Association. The official journal
of this association is the Social Science Computer
Review, and they still hold an annual conference.Computer Applications in Sociology. The prac-
tice of computing in sociology has evolved rapidly.
Computers have been applied to practically every
research task, including such unlikely ones as field
note-taking, interviewing, and hundreds of other
tasks (Brent and Anderson 1990). The many di-
verse uses of computing technology in social re-
search are difficult to categorize because applica-
tions overlap and evolve unpredictably. Nonetheless, it
is necessary to discuss different categories of appli-
cations in order to describe the state of the art of
computing in sociology. Since 1987, the Winter
issue of the Social Science Computer Review has been
devoted to an annual symposium on the ‘‘State of
the Art of Social Science Computing.’’ The catego-
rization of computer applications in this article
reflects these discussions. First, some major types
of applications are summarized in order of de-
scending popularity. Then some of the challenges
of computing for sociological research are noted.Writing and Publishing. Once equated with
the secretarial pool, word processing now is an