Digital revolution has spurred a new culture following the emergence of digital technologies in the past few decades. As the digital process changes the world, many aspects of social life and interactions are shaped by the popular triple digital revolution – social networks, the internet, and mobile devices. “Digitalization” refers to the process in which our social institutions and social relationships are influenced and shaped by digital communications and media infrastructures. In other words, digitalization is about the diffusion of digital technologies in our social institutions and relationships. Digitalization, therefore, signals various social changes dictated by the logic of digital communication and its media infrastructures. Many countries and economies in the Global South have since experienced unprecedented meltdowns calling for radical and innovative ways to both – planning and practice. This session provides a venue for scholarly exchange around the issue of digitalization and its impact on political participation and economic and social change in the Global South. We invite papers that address the following: (a) Methods and methodological issues in the study of digitalization; (b) Digitalization process and political participation; (c) Digitalization and issues of social change; (d) Ethical issues of digitalization; (e) Digital divide, digitalization and power relations; (f) Digital trends, human capital and economic transformation; (g) Digitalization, transformation of labour and consumer markets in local economies; (h) Convergence of digitalized methodologies and urban sustainability; (i) Coping with the digitalization in the COVID-19 era: Challenges and prospects; (j) Modelling (including conceptual challenges) the impacts of e-Society (e.g., virtual communities, social informatics), e-Politics (e.g., smart governance, e-democracy, e-participation), e-Humanities (e.g., digital culture), e-City (e.g., smart cities, urban governance, urban planning), e-Economy (e.g., digital economy, e-Commerce) and e-Communication (e.g., online political communication, media).
