Claudia CANTALE
Associate Researcher in Sociology of Cultural and Communication Processes. She was a Research Fellow at the Department of Humanities at the University of Catania from March 2020 to March 2025, where she conducted research in the sociology of digital media and digital sociology. Her primary area of investigation is the impact of platform capitalism on the practices of digital communities and digital youth cultures. She has published scholarly articles and monographs on online reading and writing communities on digital platforms. She has worked in the field of cultural and entertainment communication. In 2019, she published Gli Uomini e I testi (Ledizioni) and in 2024, Romance and Social reading. Comunità in rete tra impianti e cicli (Carocci). Since 2020, she has been a member of the scientific committee of CINUM - Center for Humanistic Computing (Catania, Italy). Since 2024, she has been a member of GENUS - Interdisciplinary Center for Gender Studies. By appointment of the Department of Humanities (UNICT), she was Communication Supervisor for the collections of the Archive of the Museum of the Factory of the Benedictine Monastery (Sicily, Italy), a museum of the University Museum System (SIMUA). She has conducted research and teaching abroad at the Department of Philology and Communication at the University of Alcalá de Henares (Madrid). She currently holds teaching positions in the Departments of Humanities and Political and Social Sciences at the University of Catania, and conducts research and consulting for third sector organizations.
Claudia Cantale's research focuses on the sociology of digital media and digital sociology, particularly on digital participation and creativity, and algorithmic cultures, within the framework of the metaprocess of mediatization. She focuses on what people do with platforms and, at the same time, how technological architecture organizes visibility, guides behavior, and influences cultural production. Her research therefore analyzes the relationship between technological innovation and social change, focusing on the processes through which data, algorithms, and platform architecture impact communicative and cultural practices, social relations, identity experimentation, power asymmetries, discrimination, and forms of public participation.
Her main work falls within the sociology of reading, which examines the formation of online communities of readers and writers, the circulation of texts, and the way algorithms influence tastes, visibility, and cultural practices. This research adopts a feminist perspective and a critical reading of platform capitalism.
Research on influencer culture and the creative industries is also developing in this direction, along with recent publications on generative artificial intelligence and its impact on the production, circulation, and recognition of cultural content.
Another area of interest is visual sociology, which encompasses work on memory studies and cultural heritage. The use of photographic archives as sources for reconstructing migrations, collective memory, transformations of urban space, and forms of belonging to the city is at the heart of the Imagine Antico Corso digital archive project, in which private documentation contributes to a public and shared reading of local history.
Methodologically, the work is primarily based on qualitative approaches related to digital methods, with a particular focus on netnography and digital ethnography, alongside more traditional tools such as in-depth interviews. Her research trajectory has gradually shifted from digital humanities to the study of platform communities, while maintaining a central focus on cultural participation.