Independent sociology in an asymmetric society

The position statement by Aksoy et al. (2026) identifies several challenges currently facing sociology, including rapid technological change, the growing role of private organizations in scientific production, and increasing pressure on the institutional conditions of research. One implication of these developments deserves more explicit attention: the increasing asymmetry between public research institutions and large technology companies in the production of social knowledge.

This development can be understood through James Coleman’s (1982) analysis of the “asymmetric society.” Coleman argued that modern societies are increasingly dominated by corporate actors possessing superior capacities for coordination, information control, and strategic action relative to individuals and public institutions. Contemporary digital platforms represent an advanced form of this asymmetry. As José Van Dijck and colleagues (2018) have argued, platforms have become infrastructural intermediaries that organize communication, economic exchange, information flows, and social interaction.

This asymmetry is reinforced by the different institutional principles governing public and private research. Universities are expected to operate according to standards of transparency, replicability, peer review, and open science. The position statement strongly reaffirms these principles and argues that sociology should remain committed to openness and organized scepticism (Aksoy et al., 2026). Research findings produced within universities are therefore expected to enter the public domain and become available for critique, replication, and cumulative knowledge production.

Large technology companies are not subject to comparable obligations. Their data, algorithms, and analytical procedures remain proprietary. Research findings generated within corporations frequently remain inaccessible to the broader scientific community. At the same time, these companies benefit extensively from publicly available academic research, methods, theories, and open-source tools produced within universities. The relationship is therefore asymmetric: corporate actors can draw upon public scientific knowledge while restricting reciprocal access to their own knowledge infrastructures.

This asymmetry has become increasingly visible in research relying on digital trace data. As research on online markets and digital platforms has shown, independent sociology has been able to generate important insights into trust, reputation, cooperation, discrimination, inequality, and social influence using data generated through digitally mediated interactions (Przepiorka 2023). Yet access to such data has become more restricted. Platform companies increasingly limit data collection, web scraping, and independent observation of platform activity.

Universities not only have less data than large technology companies, social science research also increasingly depends on privately controlled infrastructures to study major domains of social life. Access to these infrastructures can be modified, restricted, or withdrawn unilaterally by platform operators at any time. Independent researchers therefore face growing dependence on institutions whose infrastructures simultaneously organize social interaction and restrict access to knowledge about it.

The consequences extend beyond academic competition. Organizations possessing the strongest capacities for analyzing social behavior also exercise increasing influence over the public sphere and over the organization of everyday life. Under such conditions, independent research capacities become essential for democratic societies. Independent evaluation of digital platforms is necessary not only for scientific progress but also for informing the design of public digital infrastructures through which citizens, consumers, and organizations increasingly pursue their goals (Helbing et al., 2024; Przepiorka 2023).

For this reason, the standards defended in the position statement become more important under current conditions. The integration of theory and empirics, the emphasis on explanation, and the commitment to open science remain essential for sociology as a public scientific discipline (Aksoy et al., 2026). Sociology does not operate under the same conditions as platform companies with respect to access to behavioral data and computational infrastructures. Its contribution lies in the production of theoretically grounded and publicly accountable knowledge about social processes.

The distinction between prediction and explanation is particularly important in this context. The position statement notes that machine learning systems increasingly excel at classification and prediction, while sociology retains distinctive strengths in explanation. Sociological inquiry aims to identify the mechanisms that generate social outcomes, including the role of institutions, incentives, inequalities, social networks, norms, and forms of coordination. Research on online markets and digital platforms has demonstrated that sociological theories can successfully explain the emergence of trust, reputation, discrimination, and inequality under digitally mediated conditions (Diekmann 2026; Przepiorka 2023).

The current situation nevertheless creates risks for the future public role of sociology. If access to social reality increasingly depends on privately controlled infrastructures, independent research capacities may gradually weaken. Public institutions may become dependent on corporate actors for knowledge about political communication, information flows, social behavior, or the societal effects of artificial intelligence systems. In Coleman’s terms, this would represent a further extension of asymmetry between corporate actors and institutions intended to serve collective and public purposes.

At the same time, current developments should not be understood as technologically determined. Recent work on digital governance and participatory infrastructures has emphasized that digital systems can be organized according to different institutional principles (Helbing et al., 2024). One model relies primarily on centralized, surveillance-based, and optimization-oriented systems operated through proprietary infrastructures. Another model emphasizes participatory governance, open-source technologies, public accountability, and forms of digital coordination that support collective self-organization rather than replacing it.

This distinction is also relevant for the future role of sociology. Independent sociology is not only needed to study the social consequences of digital platforms and artificial intelligence systems. It is also needed to contribute to the design, evaluation, and governance of digital infrastructures themselves. Research on digital platforms and computational social science have already shown that sociological approaches remain essential for understanding digitally mediated forms of social interaction and social organization (Skopek 2023; Yasseri 2025).

Addressing the unequal distribution of the means of knowledge production therefore requires more than reaffirming abstract scientific principles. As the position statement observes, open science practices depend not only on individual commitments but also on institutional support from journals, universities, and funding bodies. Under current conditions, this support must also include the development of public and independent digital research infrastructures.

This includes:

• public investment in secure infrastructures for data access and storage,

At the same time, sociology should maintain the distinction between scientific inquiry and political activism emphasized in the position statement (Aksoy et al., 2026). The credibility of independent sociology depends on adherence to shared standards of evidence, transparency, and methodological rigor, especially when research concerns politically contested issues.

The unequal distribution of the means of knowledge production is becoming a central issue for the social sciences. Coleman’s analysis of the asymmetric society and van Dijck’s and her colleagues’ analysis of the platform society clarify that this issue is part of a broader transformation in the organization of modern societies. Sociology should respond neither by abandoning its commitment to openness nor by reproducing proprietary forms of research organization within universities. Instead, it should defend and help shape the institutional conditions under which independent and publicly accountable knowledge production remains possible.

The future relevance of sociology depends in part on whether independent institutions retain the capacity to produce reliable knowledge about societies increasingly organized through digital platforms. Defending rigorous and open sociology therefore also means contributing to forms of digital governance that preserve public accountability, institutional autonomy, and the capacity of democratic societies to produce independent public knowledge.