What People Leave Behind. Marks, Traces, Footprints and their Relevance to Knowledge Society

This volume contains a selection of the papers presented at the international conference “What People Leave Behind: Marks, Traces, Footprints and their Significance for Social Sciences”, held online on June 15-16, 2021, and hosted by the Department of Communication and Social Research at Sapienza-University of Rome . The initial set of research questions that drove us to organize this conference was heterogeneous. How does Google predict flu peaks before public health authorities do? Why are these predictions wrong at times? How did Walmart link a spike in the sales of Pop-Tarts to hurricane forecasts? Why are people’s inadvertent little gestures more revealing of their authentic character than any formal posture they may carefully construct? How can a single piece of unintentional information be infinitely more informative than thousands of public records? What kind of data does Netflix use to profile its customers? What did Marc Bloch mean by témoignages involontaires? Considering that no systematic analysis exists regarding social traces and footprints, even basic points were open to discussion – what have to be considered traces and footprints main characteristics, as well as their epistemological significance, ontological status, and the use (or lack thereof) of these concepts in classical social theory.