Conference Program

The rapid expansion of digital media ecosystems is profoundly transforming democratic culture, reshaping participation, collective imaginaries and the organisation of social time. Contemporary digital environments display what may be described as an “amphibious” nature: while expanding access to information and knowledge, they also intensify disinformation, polarisation and processes of data extraction and user profiling. Within the framework of platform capitalism, digital infrastructures operate through algorithmic personalisation and engagement maximisation, generating filter bubbles and echo chambers that weaken informational pluralism and the relational foundations of democratic life.

From a sociological perspective, these transformations must be interpreted within broader structural changes affecting labour, culture and everyday life. The transition from industrial capitalism to digital platform economies (Srnicek, 2017) contributes to redefining key social dichotomies such as individual versus collective, care time versus work time, and labour versus consumption, reshaping expectations, professional identities and life trajectories. Drawing on critical analyses of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2019), digital infrastructures increasingly operate as mechanisms of social regulation influencing communication processes, subjectivities and democratic participation.

Within this scenario of democratic fragility, education emerges as a crucial space for critical reflection and democratic regeneration. Schools and universities represent key intermediary institutions capable of sustaining dialogical forms of democracy by fostering critical awareness of digital power structures. This requires moving beyond a purely instrumental understanding of digital competences and developing pedagogical practices capable of cultivating reflexivity, narrative interpretation and sociological imagination.

This paper proposes a transformative pedagogical approach grounded in biographical and narrative methods. The theoretical framework draws on the tradition of sociological imagination (Mills, 1959) and on the methodological contribution of biographical sociology (Ferrarotti, 1981), emphasising the heuristic value of life stories for understanding the relationship between individual trajectories and broader social transformations. Through processes of biographical learning (Alheit, 1994; Mezirow, 1991), students are invited to reflect critically on their experiences of digital life, media practices and representations of work and the future.

The paper presents an educational experimentation based on biographical narrative workshops implemented in higher education contexts. Students engage in autobiographical reflection, narrative writing and collective interpretation of life stories in order to connect personal experiences with broader socio-economic transformations. This pedagogical experimentation draws on the research presented in the book Storie di vita… e di lavoro. Raccontare il lavoro che cambia nell’era digitale (Barricelli, 2026), based on qualitative biographical interviews with professionals from different sectors.

The life stories collected in the research are used as narrative resources in teaching activities, enabling students to recognise the connections between personal biographies and structural transformations of digital capitalism. By linking sociological analysis with biographical learning, the paper argues that transformative education can foster critical agency and democratic awareness. Preliminary observations suggest that narrative practices enhance students’ reflexive capacities and their ability to connect personal experiences with broader socio-economic transformations, revitalising the sociological imagination in the age of algorithmic capitalism.