Vol. 1 (2025)
Practice Theory: Past, Present, Future

Essays

Sociodigital Practices: Mobilising and Challenging Social Practice Theory

Published 02-04-2025

  • Dale Southerton
    • ,
  • Susan Halford

Dale Southerton
Centre for Sociodigital Futures , University of Bristol

Susan Halford
Centre for Sociodigital Futures, University of Bristol

Abstract

In this article, we ask what the emergence of digital technologies means for social practices. We argue that digital forms (devices, data, infrastructures, platforms, etc.) and (many) social practices are entangled such that they should be conceptualised as sociodigital practices. Conceptualised as such, key analytical questions are: How are sociodigital practices configured and reconfigured? And how and what kinds of connections form between sociodigital practices? We demonstrate how five concepts from Social Practice Theory (SPT) – infusing, circulating, merging and emerging, cross-referencing, and interweaving – are instructive for addressing these questions. Four challenges to SPT (and practice theories more broadly) are identified. (1) Analysis needs to extend beyond the everyday to include professional practices and sites of practice performance. (2) Technical expertise and interdisciplinary collaboration are essential to fully grasp the material threads that weave through sociodigital practices. (3) Specific concepts (infusing, cross-referencing, and interweaving) represent important analytical starting points for explaining the extensiveness and density of sociodigital practices. (4) Attention to futures claims as empirical objects of enquiry is necessary to engage with sociodigital future-making practices.

Keywords

circulating, cross-referencing, emerging, infusing, merging, sociodigital

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