Blog

markcarrigan.net/

Profile

markcarrigan.net/author/street

Homepage

markcarrigan.net/

  • An Open Access Series of Books on Why We Post

    I’ve just started working my way through this series of books produced by UCL’s massive Why We Post project. The past work of the project team is fantastic and I’m hopeful this will prove to be an important series of books, breaking new anthropological ground in our understanding of how and why people use social…

  • The sobered modernist perspective

    An interesting formulation from Eva Illouz in Why Love Hurts. I’m certainly a ‘sobered modernist’ in this sense. From loc 375-393: While my analysis of love in the conditions of modernity is critical , it is critical from the standpoint of a sobered modernist perspective: that is, a perspective which recognizes that while Western modernity…

  • The digital avoidance of difference

    A few months ago, I was surprised to see an advert for a Christian dating website on the tube. I just discovered, reading Arlie Hochschild’s The Outsourced Self, quite how widespread this is. From pg 38: Given the profits to be made, it comes as no surprise to see the current explosion of online dating…

  • Structural limits to self-control

    Myself and Tom Brock are currently working on a paper in which we analyse the discourse of ‘intelligence’ in terms of the individualisation of structural advantage: a whole range of factors are wrapped up into the descriptor of someone as ‘intelligent’ which explains a complex outcome in terms of a somewhat mysterious and inevitably overloaded…

  • The fetishisation of the event 

    From Inventing the Future, by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, loc 3468: Generic demands to experiment, create and prefigure are commonplace, but concrete proposals are all too often met with a wave of criticism outlining every possible point at which things might go wrong. In light of this dual tendency –for novelty, but against the…

  • Symposium: Anxiety and Work in the Accelerated Academy

    Friday September 23rd at the University of Warwick, 9:30am to 6:00pm The culture and organisation of knowledge production are undergoing dramatic transformations. Neo-managerialist models for the management of research and teaching, the expansion of audit and academic rankings, and the recasting of universities as service providers and students as consumers are just several of the…

  • The colonisation of life by work

    From Inventing the Future, by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, loc 2429: Work has become central to our very self-conception –so much so that when presented with the idea of doing less work, many people ask, ‘But what would I do?’ The fact that so many people find it impossible to imagine a meaningful life…

  • Trump is masculinising poverty

    An absolutely fascinating article from Arlie Hochschild, whose new book on the American right sounds like a must read: Traditional Tea Party supporters wanted to cut both the practice of cutting in line, and government rewards for doing so. Followers of Donald Trump, on the other hand, wanted to keep government benefits and remove shame…

  • A wonderful example of how universities can use YouTube

    There’s a background to this hugely succesful engagement project here:

  • Well now everything dies baby that’s a fact

    Well they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night Now they blew up his house too Down on the boardwalk they’re gettin’ ready For a fight gonna see what them racket boys can do Now there’s trouble busin’ in from outta state And the D.A. can’t get no relief Gonna be a rumble…

  • The political significance of the zombie horde

    A really interesting suggestion from a report on the Republican convention in the London Review of Books: What’s new with Trump – though reminiscent of the anti-immigrant rhetoric at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th – is the replacement of the image of the dark-skinned freeloader with that of a…

  • Home ownership as a psychological rather than economic reality 

    From the wonderful Evicted, by Matthew Desmond, loc 654-669: When Pam and Ned arrived at College Mobile Home Park, Tobin and Lenny offered them the “Handyman Special,” a free mobile home. Under this arrangement, tenants owned the trailers, and Tobin owned the ground underneath them. He charged the owners “lot rent,” which was equivalent to…

  • The future of labour in digital capitalism

    Bleak but plausible predictions from Nick Srniceck and Alex Williams in their Inventing the Future. From loc 2020-2035: 1. The precarity of the developed economies’ working class will intensify due to the surplus global labour supply (resulting from both globalisation and automation).  2. Jobless recoveries will continue to deepen and lengthen, predominantly affecting those whose…

  • The fragility of the occupy movement

    From Inventing the Future, by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Loc 674-694: Without the central focus of the occupied spaces, the movement dispersed and fragmented. Ultimately, the organisational form of these movements could not overcome the problems of scalability and construct a form of persistent power capable of effectively resisting the inevitable reaction from the…

  • What do you do when people you like act offensively online?

    I’ve been planning how to address this issue much more comprehensively in a second edition of Social Media for Academics. But then Vox helpfully shared this flow chart and I’m not sure I have anything further to add:  

  • Fragile movements and their political cultures 

    From Inventing the Future, by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, loc 85-94: From the alter-globalisation struggles of the late 1990s, through the antiwar and ecological coalitions of the early 2000s, and into the new student uprisings and Occupy movements since 2008, a common pattern emerges: resistance struggles rise rapidly, mobilise increasingly large numbers of people,…

  • From Platform Capitalism to Protocol Communism

    A really interesting suggestion from loc 3681-3691 from Douglas Rushkoff’s Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: In terms of fully decentralized commerce, these platform cooperatives are still just steps along the way to digital distributism. As long as there’s a central platform—a Web site or other hub to maintain—there will always be a need for central…

  • The coming army of American demagogues

    There’s an interesting extract in this Guardian article about the growing civil war in the Republican party, concerning the adoption of Trump’s tactics by aspirant politicians within the party: Trump’s refusal to support McCain and Ryan comes exactly one week before Ryan faces a primary challenge from the businessman Paul Nehlen, a candidate who has…

  • The Geographical Dynamics of Winner-Takes-Most

    An interesting move by the takeaway firm Just-Eat who have sold off their business in national markets where they don’t have clear leadership. This highlights an interesting question: how does the much discussed winner-takes-most dynamic of digital markets, in which the rewards overwhelmingly go to the leader within a field, manifest itself in spatial terms?

  • When did optimism become a characteristic possessed by the right and lacked by the left?

    Why did the only positive vision of Britain’s future come from right-wing Brexit advocates? That’s the question I’m preoccupied by having read Why Vote Leave by Daniel Hannan. Take this for example, from loc 1903-1917: It’s 2020, and the UK is flourishing outside of the EU. The rump Union, now a united bloc, continues its…

  • Post-democratic decision making in the EU

    From Why Vote Leave, by Dan Hannan, loc 739: Lobbyists love the EU, intuiting from the moment they arrive that it was designed by and for people like them. There are some 25,000 lobbyists in Brussels, some in-house, some working for several clients, some representing pressure groups or regions, most representing big business. Figure Five…

  • Academic video blogs: 5 tips for getting started

    A really useful resource produced by jobs.ac.uk:

  • Constraining the dreams of (aspiring) #digitalelites

    From Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, by Douglas Rushkoff, loc 3167: So they accept the hypergrowth logic of the startup economy as if it really were the religion of technology development. They listen to their new mentors and accept their teachings as gifts of wisdom. These folks already gave me millions of dollars; of…

  • The economic limitations of the attention economy

    From Douglas Rushkoff’s Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, loc 2256: Besides, consumer research is all about winning some portion of a fixed number of purchases. It doesn’t create more consumption. If anything, technological solutions tend to make markets smaller and less likely to spawn associated industries in shipping, resource management, and labor services. Digital…

  • Something has ended and everyone can feel it

    From pg 31 of Joshua Clover’s Riot. Strike. Riot. Something has ended, or should have ended; everyone can feel it. It is a sort of interregnum. A miserable lull, backlit everywhere by the sense of declension and fires flaring across the planetary terrain of struggle. The songs on the radio are the same—awful, astonishing. They…

  • What is a ‘strike’ and what is a ‘riot’?

    From Joshua Clover’s Riot. Strike. Riot. pg 15: The strike is the form of collective action that  1) struggles to set the price of labor power (or the conditions of labor, which is much the same thing: the amount of misery that can be purchased by the pound);  2) features workers appearing in their role…

  • Symposium: Anxiety and Work in the Accelerated Academy

    Friday September 23rd at the University of Warwick, 9:30am to 6:00pm The culture and organisation of knowledge production are undergoing dramatic transformations. Neo-managerialist models for the management of research and teaching, the expansion of audit and academic rankings, and the recasting of universities as service providers and students as consumers are just several of the…

  • The Return of the Riot

    From Joshua Clover’s Riot. Strike. Riot pg 2. He argues that the return of the riot reverses a long term trend observed by Charles Tilley, in which the riot had given way to the strike as the foremost tactic in socially available repertoires of contention: As the overdeveloped nations have entered into sustained, if uneven,…

  • I Could’a Been A Contender

    I’m broke and I’m hungry, I’m hard up and I’m lonely I’ve been dancing on this killing floor for years And of the few things I am certain, I’m the captain of my burden I’m sorry doll, I could never stop the rain Once you said I was your hero You would dance with me…

  • The future of digital corporate personhood

    This is the second time I’ve encountered this idea recently. How plausible is it? From Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, by Douglas Rushkoff, loc 1384: Digital technology, though, might finally give corporations the autonomy they need to make decisions without us, and even the bodies they need to execute their choices in the real…

  • The coordinates of the austerity consensus are disintegrating

    From Corbyn: Against All Odds, by Richard Seymour, pg 22. There’s a huge opportunity for the Labour left but also a huge risk, as momentum has built for an anti-austerity platform that might no longer be relevant: “It is not clear what will happen to the debt/speculation economy, or the ‘property-owning democracy’ where large numbers…

  • The limitations on learning to code as a labour market strategy

    In the last few months I’ve become very interested in the status accorded to coding as a labour market strategy. It’s held up as both individually rational and a viable strategy for governments seeking to grow the human capital of their citizens. However, as Douglas Rushkoff observes in his Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus,…

  • things I’ve been reading recently #25

    So Sad Today by Melissa Broder Palo Alto by James Franco Alibaba’s World: How One Remarkable Chinese Company is Revolutionising Global Business by Porter Erisman Digital Gold: The Untold Story of Bitcoin by Nathaniel Popper The Frontman: Bono (In the Name of Power) by Harry Browne Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics by Richard Seymour Pity the Billionaire: The Unlikely…

  • The end game of the American free-market right 

    From Pity the Billionaire, by Thomas Frank, loc 2881-2896: As the nation clambers down through the sulfurous fumes into the pit called utopia, the thinking of the market-minded will continue to evolve. Before long they will have discovered that certain once-uncontroversial arms of the state must be amputated immediately. One fine day in the near…

  • Understanding the rage of the Labour right

    From Corbyn: Against All Odds, by Richard Seymour, pg 15: Adam Phillips suggests that our rages disclose what it is we think we are entitled to. We become infuriated when the world doesn’t live up to our largely unconscious assumptions about how it should be for us. What might the fury of Labour’s right-wingers, as…

  • The tragically incompetent elites of the centre left

    This critique by Thomas Frank, on loc 2729 of his Pity the Billionaire, applies as well to proponents of the ‘third way’ within the Labour Party as it does to the leaders of the Democratic Party in relation to whom they originally articulated the notion: Sometimes when I watch the Washington Democrats in action, my…

  • The radicalisation of reactionaries

    An interesting analysis from Pity the Billionaire, by Thomas Frank, loc 1746-1759: And so, over the years, the movement came to affect a revolutionary posture toward the state that it might have borrowed from Karl Marx or Jean-Paul Sartre. It imitated the protest culture of the sixties, right down to a feigned reverence for anticommunist…

  • The fantasistic political ontologies which emerge under post-democracy

    From Pity the Billionaire, by Thomas Frank, loc 1380. This is a summary of the populist right’s understanding of the structure of society: America is made up of two classes, roughly speaking, “ordinary people” and “intellectuals.” According to this way of thinking, as we see again and again, either you’re a productive citizen, or you’re…

  • The Myth of Elite Cosmopolitanism

    A rapidly developing discourse which contrasts elite cosmopolitanism with insular populism should be treated more critically than is being done so at present. This interesting article by Ross Douthat takes issue with this supposed cosmpolitanism: Genuine cosmopolitanism is a rare thing. It requires comfort with real difference, with forms of life that are truly exotic relative to one’s…

  • Stories of the River Irwell

    Interesting short film made by someone I met yesterday:

  • Rhetorical rapture-races and contemporary fragile movements 

    I love the phrase ‘rhetorical rapture-race’ used by Thomas Frank to describe the mobilising dynamics of the far-right resurgence in the U.S. From his Pity the Billionaire loc 960: Conspiracy theorists have always been with us. But Glenn Beck brought them into the mainstream. And so began one of the most distinctive features of the…

  • Reviews of Social Media for Academics

    Alex’s Archives The LSE Review of Books Simply Sociology The Tyee Inside Higher Ed Good Reads Amazon Reviews (UK) Amazon Reviews (US) Doctoral Writing SIG Hannah Čulík-Baird Higher Education Journal of Learning and Teaching Joanne Broder Sumerson (Psych Critiques) South African Journal of Science The BPS Journal Good Reads Other media coverage: Social media tools academics may find useful (University…

  • The (American) dreams of defensive elites

    An interesting extract from The Frontman: Bono (In the Name of Power), by Harry Browne, loc 2967: What is intriguing about Bono’s rhapsody is the part of the history lesson that really excited him: not democracy, but the ability of a group of rich men to bring about dramatic change, and to do so in…

  • The expert-celebrity axis and the legitimation of technocracy 

    From The Frontman: Bono (in the name of power), by Harry Browne, from loc 1655-1676: Celebrity humanitarianism is one component of this. Yrjölä and other scholars locate its rise within a wider shift in global governance in the neoliberal period, one ‘that brings northern governments, NGOs and global celebrities together’. Celebrity politics, other scholars conclude,…

  • The defensive elites of the cultural industries 

    In my search for ‘defensive elites’, which is to say high-net worth individuals exhibiting insecurity and defensiveness about their position within society, I’ve tended to focus on the business world. But this fabulously readable book by Harry Browne, The Frontman: Bono (in the Name of Power), suggests I’ve cast the net too narrowly. From loc…

  • An interview with Inside Higher Ed about Social Media for Academics

    An interview with Carl Straumsheim from Inside Higher Education, due to be published later this week.  Q: In the book, you grapple with the idea of writing about a topic that “will be out of date by the book is read, let alone a year or two later.” But you argue that while platforms may go…

  • Designing platforms to mitigate power law effects

    From Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, by Douglas Rushkoff, loc 504: For instance, Bandcamp, a music streaming and download service much like iTunes or Spotify, distinguishes itself by intentionally working against power-law dynamics. It caters to less-established underground and alternative artists, charging less than half the sales commission of its competitors. Unlike the “Top…

  • How digitalisation reduces cultural variety 

    Much of the most recent paper I’ve written is concerned with this process & how a focus on personal reflexivity can help us understand it. From Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, by Douglas Rushkoff, loc 482-496: The overwhelming variety of possibilities leads us to gravitate to machine-winnowed lists, if for no other reason than…

  • A fantastic podcast discussion about social media for academics

    This is one of the best discussions about social media for academics I’ve heard: Episode 58 of This Week In Health Law. Fresh from ASLME’s Health Law Professors’ Conference in Boston: a special TWIHL! Pharmalot’s Ed Silverman joins a cavalcade of past show guests (Rachel Sachs, Ross Silverman, and Nicholas Bagley) for a conversation about social…

  • Social media: singular or plural?

    It’s hard to write at length about social media without pondering this question seriously. This post offers the most articulate answer to this question I’ve come across: use the plural when you’re talking about a collection of social media channels and their characteristics, use the singular when you’re talking about the cumulative effects of social media as a…

  • The Intensified Work of Start-Ups

    I like this description by Porter Erisman, reflecting on loc 1923 of Alibaba’s World about his experience as head of PR for the company up until soon after its IPO: WORKING IN A fast-growing start-up is a bit like running a marathon. It’s an endurance test, filled with highs and lows. At times you want…

  • The Importance of Disappointment

    There’s a lovely passage by Olivia Lang, quoted in this review of her recent book, which reminds me of what Ian Craib called the importance of disappointment: There is a gentrification that is happening to cities, and there is a gentrification that is happening to the emotions too, with a similarly homogenising, whitening, deadening effect. Amidst the…

  • An infopolitical critique of lazy applications of ‘panopticism’

    This is really interesting. I’ll definitely read some of his work:

  • Against craft capitalism 

    An important reminder by Douglas Rushkoff in Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus. From loc 198-212: For many of us, the current system, however convoluted, is better than nothing, and changing to one in which we must create real value is frightening. Most people are not cultural creatives capable of launching a business on Etsy,…

  • The Idiots Who Make History

    Until recently I scoffed at the idea of history being shaped by ‘great men’. Such a notion seems obviously ahistorical to me, abstracting from the messy reality of how change occurs and imputing the complex array of causal powers involved to a small group of unusually prominent individuals. But since the referendum I find myself…

  • Biographical Approaches to Studying Digital Capitalism

    In the early pages of Douglas Rushkoff’s Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, he offers a cogent analysis of how initial public offerings lock tech companies into a growth imperative which ultimately proves destructive of the value they create. As he puts it on loc 169, “Having taken in this much new capital, however, Twitter now needs…

  • The Lived Reality of Work in Tech Firms

    From Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, by Douglas Rushkoff, loc 72-86: A few weeks later, there was nothing to smile about. Protesters in Oakland were now throwing rocks at Google’s buses and broke a window, terrifying employees. Sure, I was as concerned about the company’s practices as anyone, and frustrated by the way Silicon…

  • Things I’d like to include in a potential second edition of Social Media for Academics

    It’s possible I’m getting ahead of myself here, but if there were a second edition of Social Media for Academics at some point in the future, these are some topics I’d like to include: Reddit and how to use it academically Snapchat and how to use it academically Instagram and how to use it academically Image creation…

  • The global ambitions of tech giants

    A fascinating article on the LSE’s Media Policy Blog about the global ambitions of contemporary technology giants and the corporate structures which facilitate them: The folks who run these companies understand this. For if there is one thing that characterises the leaders of Google and Facebook it is their determination to take the long, strategic…

  • Two documentaries about the super-rich

    Recommended on this thread I started on Reddit. I haven’t watched them yet, saved here for future reference: There’s loads of other interesting suggestions on the thread which I intend to follow up on.

  • Take the time to make some sense of what you want to say

    Take the time to make some sense Of what you want to say And cast your words away upon the waves And sail them home with acquiesce On a ship of hope today And as they land upon the shore Tell them not to fear no more Say it loud, and sing it proud today…

  • things I’ve been reading recently #24

    No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy by Linsey McGoey Shadow State: Inside the Secret Companies that Run Britain by Alan White The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich by Daniel Ammann Intern Nation: How To Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave…

  • Facebook’s advertising campaign

    These are in Manchester Piccadilly at the moment. Anyone know how widespread this campaign is?

  • Wherefore Art Thou, Elvis?

    And I got half a mind to let it all burn up in this fire I’ve had burning through my veins since I first learned to cry I’d watch this whole night come down and never miss her again I never felt right and never fit in walkin’ in my own skin Walkin’ in my…

  • Institutionalised depoliticisation at the IMF 

    From No Such Thing as a Free Gift, by Linsey McGoey, loc 2771: The tendency for political objectives to drive economic decisions –which are then propagated as purely technical policies geared at improving economic growth –is a well-known operating principle within the IMF. The late economist Jacques Polak, a former IMF director of research and…

  • Murmuration

    Watching this is enough to make me temporarily rethink my long standing hostility to ‘global brain’ speculation. It’s remarkable what beautiful order can arise in a purely aggregative way and it’s something I’ve tended not to recognise in my theorising of collectivity.

  • Trans/Gender-Nonconforming College Students Project

    Trans/Gender-Nonconforming College Students Project Abbie Goldberg, a Professor of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester MA, is conducting a survey oftrans/gender-nonconforming college students (including recent graduates) regarding their perspectives and experiences on a range of topics, including trans advocacy and needed supports/services on college campuses.Students with non-binary gender identities are particularly encouraged to participate, as…

  • What makes the sharing economy go round?

    A question I’ve been asking myself since I reluctantly started using Uber a few months ago: what makes the sharing economy go round? ‘Uberness‘ does: Uber rides require some “Uberness” from both the client and riders. We’re commited to making sure to work with quality drivers and do our best to keep your rides as…

  • Social media for academics and the risk of becoming ‘TED heads’

    One of the anxieties I’ve regularly encountered about social media for academics is that it might lead to a devaluing of academic culture. What if I were to tell you that the spectre haunting the imagination of academics is the TED talK? There’s a lovely expression used by Linsey McGoey in her No Such Thing as a…

  • The Janus-faced ideology of philanthropic elites

    A fascinating observation in No Such Thing as a Free Gift, by Linsey McGoey, loc 785. I wonder if the digital elites who interest me see their wealth in similar terms? It was a Janus-faced ideology; one side of Carnegie was extraordinarily generous, expending time and vast financial sums on goals such as military disarmament…

  • Social Media and Academic Labour

    Notes for my talk in Leeds tomorrow.  It is increasingly hard to move without encountering the idea that social media is something of value for academics. The reasons offered are probably quite familiar by now. It helps ensure your research is visible, both inside and outside the academy. Many of us might be sceptical of…

  • Philanthrocapitalism as an assembly device for elites 

    From No Such Thing as a Free Gift, by Linsey McGoey, Loc 492: The William J. Clinton Foundation dispensed money to numerous causes, with a focus on global health and economic development. Band’s idea was something new. He saw the need for an annual event, similar to Davos, which could bring powerful elites into contact…

  • The growth of elite philanthropy 

    I had no idea how rapidly this was growing. From No Such Thing as a Free Gift, by Linsey McGoey, loc 282: Nearly half of the 85,000 private foundations in the United States alone were created in the past fifteen years. About 5,000 more philanthropic foundations are set up each year. There are questions that…

  • Hip hop culture, philanthrocapitalism and getting shit done 

    I’ve been fascinated in recent months by the relationship between hip hop and tech. In some cases quite explicitly, senior figures in technology find cultural inspiration for the approach they take to management in contemporary hip hop. I’m interested in the notion of ‘business for punks’ for the same reason.  In essence, I thought this…

  • Hip hop culture, philanthrocapitalism and getting shit done 

    I’ve been fascinated in recent months by the relationship between hip hop and tech. In some cases quite explicitly, senior figures in technology find cultural inspiration for the approach they take to management in contemporary hip hop. I’m interested in the notion of ‘business for punks’ for the same reason.  In essence, I thought this…

  • Who are the world’s 950 billionaires?

    From Common Wealth, by Jeffrey Sachs, pg 327-328. Quoted in Jefffey Sachs, by Japhey Wilson, loc 1457: There are now around 950 billionaires in the world, with an estimated combined wealth of $3.5 trillion. That’s an amazing $900 billion in just one year. Even after all the yachts, mansions, and luxury living that money can…

  • Transformative Horizons

    A few thoughts, prompted by the dispiriting act of choosing cosmopolitan austerity over nationalistic austerity in the UK referendum: Our perception of transformative possibilities is culturally constructed. Certain ranges of possibility are foregrounded and others backgrounded. Our sense of viability is the most cognitive dimension to this, informed by implicit and explicit ontological assumptions about…

  • Sociology Social Media Assistant CfA

    An interesting opportunity, though personally the language of ‘assistant’ and one year would put me off a little bit: *Apologies for crossposting* Dear Colleagues, Since its launch in August 2014, the Twitter account for Sociology has become a popular and important means of promoting the journal to a wide academic and non-academic audience. Social media…

  • Ideas for action from Teela Sanders and @RuthPatrick0

    I saw a great talk yesterday, at the ESRC’s North West DTC, from Teela Sanders and Ruth Patrick about how to make an impact with doctoral research. I particularly liked this slide near the end, in which they suggested an incredibly diverse range of ways in which doctoral researchers (and others) could take action based on their…

  • Interned Professionals and Defensive Elites

    An interesting point in Intern Nation, by Ross Perlin, reflecting on the long term consequences of the institutionalised internship system for the constitution of the professions. From loc 3035-3051: Besides, it’s probably too early to gauge the deepest effects—the internship explosion has only gone fully mainstream, integrated into every white-collar field, since around the turn…

  • The Zero Marginal Cost Society

    From Intern Nation, by Ross Perlin, loc 2379: (A small-scale survey in the U.K., conducted in 2010, found that a whopping 86 percent of recent graduates and soon-to-be graduates were willing to work for free, despite considering it exploitative.) As the cost of copying and disseminating (but not creating) content has plunged towards zero, no…

  • Making the Most of Social Media

    Notes for my talk at the ESRC North West DTC tomorrow Social media has changed a lot since I began my PhD. But what’s notable about this is that I didn’t start my PhD particularly long ago. When I began in 2008, my blogging was a personal hobby which I couldn’t possibly conceive of as…

  • A couple of places left for the Morphogenetic Approach workshop on Tuesday @SocioWarwick

    Get in touch ASAP if you’d like a place – there will be a workshop session by Margaret Archer, a number of paper presentations & a chance for extensive discussion with others using the morphogenetic approach.

  • Great Expectations

  • What are the risks of social media for academics?

    These are the risks I discussed with participants in a workshop I ran in York last week:

  • What scholarly activities have you engaged in over the last week?

    This is the question I asked participants in a workshop I ran in York last week. By looking at specific activities that academics perform in their working life, it becomes easier to unpack the possibilities of social media for academics and see how it can be used effectively:

  • CfP: Anarchist Technologies Repair Manual

    This looks like a fascinating call for papers: Anarchist Technologies Repair Manual fixing the world through resistance and repair CFP: Call for Papers for an Edited Book Anarchism is experiencing a renaissance in locations all across the world. Facilitated by information technologies, new anarchist communities are forming and more established ones are gaining greater recognition.…

  • A Decade of Web 2.0: Reflections, Critical Perspectives, and Beyond

    This looks like a superb special issue: Very happy to announce the publication of “A Decade of Web 2.0: Reflections, Critical Perspectives, and Beyond”, a special issue of First Monday, co-editted by Michael Zimmer and Anna L. Hoffmann. http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/issue/view/482 The issue includes an impressive set of diverse contributions revisiting the topic of critical engagement with…

  • UCU workload survey report

    Recording this for future use when Filip Vostal and I progress a bit further with our book: You will remember that earlier this year we surveyed all members to find out more about your concerns around workload intensification and working hours. The report and an executive summary are now available here. Thank you to the…

  • Value and Values

    I can’t wait for this end of conference event for Bev Skeggs and Simon Yuill’s Facebook project: “Value and Values” Saturday December 3rd 2016 9.30-18.30, followed by a wine reception at 18.30 Goldsmiths, University of London  This event is the final symposium for the ESRC Professorial Fellowship project “Value and Values” (ES/K010786/1) conducted between 2013-2016…

  • The Intern Army on Which Washington Depends

    I knew there were a lot but had no idea it was this many. From Intern Nation, by Ross Perlin, loc 1946: According to an estimate by Politico and the Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars, 20,000 interns descend on the capital each summer, approximately 6,000 of them filling Congressional slots—which would come out…