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  • 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…

  • Digital capitalism and the imperative to be noticed 

    In Ross Perlin’s Intern Nation, he writes of how interns voluntarily subjugate themselves in order to ‘be noticed’, even if they have little expectation that their internship will lead to a permanent job. From loc 1997: There is rarely much reason to believe that internships in the public sector or at nonprofits will convert directly…

  • things I’ve been reading recently #23

    Trouble in Paradise by Slavoj Zizek Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success by Michael D’Antonio Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson Why I Left Goldman Sachs by Gregg Smith No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald Graphic Novels: Sons of the Devil by Brian Buccellato The Fuse by Shari Chankhamma Captain America: Two…

  • What might Trumpist authoritarianism look like?

    A worryingly plausible set of suggestions in this article: Absolute Loyalty to the Boss Partisan Control of all Three Branches ICE as a Gestapo for the Foreign-Born Politicizing the IRS Prosecutorial Discretion Presidential Regulatory and Executive Power Trump and the Labor MovemenThe Use of Mobs National Security Emergencies and Subversives Playing Favorites and Enemies with…

  • A wonderful analogy by @Elinor_Carmi

    I love the analogy offered by Elinor Carmi at the start of this excellent Open Democracy piece: Yesterday I walked to the supermarket, like I do every Tuesday morning. All of a sudden I started noticing a few people starting to follow me. I try to convince myself that it is probably just my imagination, and…

  • The Celebrity Millionaires of Competitive Gaming

  • Are exploitative professors breaking the law by recruiting student interns?

    Based on the cases I’ve seen in person, I suspect there’s a growing subterranean practice in the UK of exploitative professors recruiting students to work as unpaid research assistants with the promise of a ‘letter of reference’ in lieu of payment. In one case that particularly bothered me, the first year UG student in question…

  • Vintage social media

    A lovely graphic by John Atkinson, via the Visual Social Media Lab:

  • The growth of the Twinterns

    This is apparently growing rapidly: why pay staff to do this when you can get desperate graduates to do it for free? Want to jump start a social media marketing campaign for your business but don’t have the time or social media savvy in Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs or similar sites? Try this twist on…

  • Magical thinking as occupational opportunities contract 

    I just came across this sentence by Mark Granovetter on loc 721 of Ross Perlin’s Intern Nation: “There may be just enough cases around that people know about to give people encouragement, but not enough to really make it likely that that’s going to happen for any particular person.” This is another way of talking…

  • A sign of how messed up expectations about taxation have become in the last few decades

    This was Donald Trump’s stance only a couple of decades ago. From pg 222 of Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success: Trump attempted a more serious pose, traveling to Capitol Hill to tell a congressional committee that he thought they should raise taxes on the rich. Reagan tax cuts that had reduced…

  • Algorithmic pricing predates online retail

    From Misbehaving, by Richard Thaler, pg 134. Social norms hindered it in this instance. Why could the same not true be true of online retail?  The CEO of Coca-Cola also discovered the hard way that violating the norms of fairness can backfire. Douglas Ivester, aged fifty-two, appeared to be on his way to the job of…

  • A behavioural economic critique of Uber’s surge pricing

    From Misbehaving, by Richard Thaler, pg 136: Uber has defended surge pricing on the basis that a higher price will act as an incentive for more drivers to work during peak periods. It is hard to evaluate this argument without seeing internal data on the supply response by drivers, but on the face of it…

  • Elon Musk responds to the satirisation of #DigitalElites in Silicon Valley

    A wonderful snippet I just came across on Wikipedia: Elon Musk, after viewing the first episode of the show, said: “None of those characters were software engineers. Software engineers are more helpful, thoughtful, and smarter. They’re weird, but not in the same way. I was just having a meeting with my information security team, and…

  • Call for Papers: The Accelerated Academy

    November 30th t0 December 3rd 2016, Leiden University From the 1980s onward, there has been an unprecedented growth of institutions and procedures for auditing and evaluating university research. Quantitative indicators are now widely used from the level of individual researchers to that of entire universities, serving to make academic activities more visible, accountable and amenable to university…

  • Forces of Victory

  • Laziness as a virtue 

    I’m very interested in the way ‘laziness’ now tends to be used to describe procrastination: it’s often a loaded term to covey that someone is driven by their own interests rather than institutional ones. Here’s an example of what I mean, from Misbehaving, by Richard Thaler, pg xiii: The interview started. Hearing a friend tell an…

  • Work Life Balance + Digital Conference

    A really interesting conference I wish I could make it to: Work Life Balance + Digital Conference We’ve got a few £20/£12 places left for our “BEYOND BALANCE: How digital technologies are affecting our work, our homes, and everything in between” conference in London on Mon 27 June that we wanted to highlight to sociologists…

  • Billionaires are people, too

    There’s another wonderful scene here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU1vlbsxGGQ

  • Practical Sociology: Agenda for Action

    BSA Sociologists outside Academia, in collaboration with Sage Publishing Ltd and the Sociological Imagination Practical Sociology: Agenda for Action A half-day workshop British Psychological Society meeting rooms, Tabernacle St London EC2A 4UE Monday 17 October 2016, 12.30 – 4.30pm How come – at least in the UK –you don’t come across people with ‘sociologist’ in…

  • What is Digital Hygiene?

    Any suggestions about where I can find syllabi for digital hygiene courses in schools would be much appreciated. I’m also curious about how advocates of ‘digital hygiene’ see its relationship to the notion of a ‘digital footprint’: is the former what we must do in order to mitigate the damage potentially created by the latter?

  • From the mass surveillance state to techno-fascism

    From The Black Box Society, by Frank Pasquale, pg 52: An unaccountable surveillance state may pose a greater threat to liberty than any particular terror threat. It is not a spectacular dangers, but rather an erosion of a range of freedoms. Most insidiously, the “watchers” have the power to classify those who dare to point…

  • What do universities know about our sexual orientations?

  • Using @IFTTT and Twitter to curate material for research projects

    Two new projects I’m in the early stages of working on both necessitate engagement with phenomena that are developing rapidly. This poses an obvious question: how to identify relevant material and then archive it in a useful way? I’ve written a lot about the curation process before and I won’t rehash it here. Instead, I…

  • The Moral Reasoning of Edward Snowden

    I’m reading Glenn Greenwald’s No Place to Hide and thought these statements from Edward Snowden were powerful: https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/738405216459063297 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/738408900576350209 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/738411435265527808 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/738420122541510656 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/738418061720596480 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/738415776818991105 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/738415940644286464 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/738418061443764224 https://twitter.com/mark_carrigan/status/738418061531844609

  • I lied about being the outdoor type

    I always had a roof above me, I always paid the rent And I’ve never set foot inside a tent I couldn’t build a fire to save my life I lied about being the outdoor type Well, I’ve never slept out underneath the stars The closest that I came to that was one time in…

  • The Invention of Lifestyle

    An interesting snippet from pg 150 of Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success: When first used by psychologist Alfred Adler in 1929, lifestyle referred to strategies people used to avoid dealing with problems or uncomfortable situations. The word was repurposed in the 1960s to mean something akin to “way of living.” In…

  • What Donald Trump’s business strategies suggest about his presidency 

    I just came across this snippet on pg 128 of Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success. It’s hard not to wonder if this is what the presidential contest will herald, after the extremism of the primaries. By proposing something that might seem threatening or outrageous, he staked out a position that would…

  • “The second I walk through those doors, all my problems go away. The second I leave them, my problems are back”

    In Grayson Perry’s All Man, the artist interviews an MMA fighter in the north-east of England who describes the joy he takes in fighting: The second I walk through them doors to the second I walk out, it’s heaven in here. It’s heaven. All your problems go away. The second you walk out the door, they’re…

  • Omnifocus for Academics

    I’ve been a devoted user of Omnifocus for going on five years. At this point, I struggle to imagine how I could work without it, as I’m so utterly reliant on it to transform the hyperactive clutter within my mind into an ordered archive outside of it. But it’s hard to use. It took me…

  • A partial defence of Gawker’s prurience: the necessity of scrutinising #DigitalElites

    This is an important though contentious article by Morozov, reflecting on the recent revelation that Peter Thiel was secretly funding Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker. While the much maligned company has regularly descended into prurience, they’ve provided a vital service by critically scrutinising the personal lives of digital elites & we need to resist the mobilisation of…

  • The infrastructural ambitions of technology companies

    Given the cash reserves (see below) and/or capacity to raise investment of each of these companies, as well as the practical challenge they face in expanding their markets, it seems likely these nascent infrastructural ambitions will only grow and grow: Facebook and Microsoft are going underwater. The two technology companies announced on Thursday they are…

  • Strategic distraction as a tool of political control on the Chinese internet

    The paper by Gary King this reports on sounds like a must read: What the research showed was a degree of subtlety and sophistication undreamed of in western coverage of Chinese online censorship. In essence, King et al suggested that almost everything we think we know about the Chinese internet is wrong. For one thing,…

  • Surveillance and the Public Sphere: confronting a democratic dilemma

    A broad and enlightening talk from Oscar Gandy, one of the foundational figures in Surveillance Studies, with a great response by Louise Amoore:

  • How do Americans define the sharing economy?

    Given how much time and energy has gone into constructing the notion of the ‘sharing economy’, these findings are fascinating. I would have assumed awareness of the term to be much higher and for established brands to dominate the explanations offered by respondents, something which was apparently not the case.

  • Fame and the content eco-system

    In Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, there’s an interesting reflection on pg 46 about Trump’s first experience of being in a newspaper: In his third year at the academy he earned a headline in the local paper—“ Trump Wins Game for NYMA”—and the experience was almost electrifying. “It felt good seeing…

  • The Blizzard of Photography

    I just came across this brief reference in Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success which makes me think it’s important to read Sontag to develop my case about digital distraction. From pg 63: Susan Sontag would observe in On Photography that inexpensive photos, produced by the hundreds, created a record that allowed an…

  • Varoufakis on contemporary capitalism’s preposterous reversal of the truth

    This isn’t a new idea but I’ve rarely encountered it expressed so concisely: The idea that individuals create wealth and that all governments do is come along and tax them is what Varoufakis calls “a preposterous reversal of the truth”. “There is an amazing myth in our enterprise culture that wealth is created individually and…

  • Donald Trump as an Attentional Entrepeneur

    From Donald Trump: The Pursuit of Success, pg 13 – one who constantly seeks out new ways to make claims upon attention and diligently measures and assesses the success of these innovations: For decades, no one has made a more insistent claim on the nation’s attention than this man. Trump begins each day with a…

  • ‘Intelligence’ as an explanatory concept 

    I’m working on a paper with Tom Brock at the moment in which we’re trying to unpack the contemporary meaning that ‘intelligence’ holds in political and economic discourse. ‘Intelligence’ is something invoked in the same way that ‘merit’ and ‘will’ have been previously. For instance, see this extract from Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit…

  • Funding third-party lawsuits as a tool of defensive elites

    This thought-provoking Vox article suggests a disturbing trend: Olson argues that if you went back a century or two and talked to British or American legal scholars, “they’d say of course these things would be used by the rich and powerful if you allowed them.” Under doctrines called champerty and maintenance, the law used to…

  • Against lists of academic publications

    Are these necessary? A conversation I had last week while I was travelling made me think that I should go back to including one on my website, lest someone quickly scanning it (who might, for example, want to hire me to do some consultancy) doesn’t take me seriously as a scholar. But ten minutes of preparing such…

  • The Fragile Movements of Late Modernity

    I’m really pleased this paper has been published. It got to well over 17,000 words at one point, prompting me to realise that I was actually starting a book, which I’m now a good year into planning and writing: Social movements often make an important contribution to the normative order within social life but how…

  • Sociology and Fiction: a @thesocreview Special Feature

    I think this is come out really well. Get in touch if you’d like to contribute something further: Imagining Futures: From Sociology of the Future to Future Fictions The Future Perfect Writing Fiction and Writing Social Science Life Chances: Co-written re-imagined welfare utopias through a fictional novel Patricia Leavy on Social Fictions Showing, not telling:…

  • A special @thesocreview feature on the rise of the Superstar Professor

    I’m really pleased with this special feature I just finished for The Sociological Review’s website: Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a SUPER PROFESSOR! Slavo Zizek: Between Public Intellectual and Academic Celebrity How To Shift Sociological Product: Lessons From the Career of Tony Giddens Academic Celebrity and the Publishing Industry On…

  • Deleuzian populism

    From Zizek’s Trouble In Paradise, pg 181: The ongoing popular protests around Europe converge in a series of demands which, in their very spontaneity and directness, form a kind of ‘epistemological obstacle’ to any proper confrontation with the ongoing crisis of our political system. These demands effectively read as a popularized version of Deleuzian politics:…

  • The Electorate as Constitutional Kings

    I really like this framing by Zizek on pg 177 of his Trouble in Paradise. The discourse on ‘populism’ should be read through this lens: the bewilderment and scorn elites feel when this polite agreement breaks down. In this sense, in a democracy, every ordinary citizen effectively is a king –but a king in a…

  • The threat of pseudo-activity

    From Zizek’s Trouble in Paradise, pg 174-175: The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to ‘be active’, to ‘participate’, to mask the Nothingness of what goes on. People intervene all the time, ‘do something’, while academics participate in meaningless ‘debates’, and so on, and the truly difficult thing is to step back,…

  • Before Bourdieu, there was Orwell

    I love this little passage, quoted on pg 172 of Zizek’s Trouble in Paradise: We all rail against class-distinctions, but very few people seriously want to abolish them. Here you come upon the important fact that every revolutionary opinion draws part of its strength from a secret conviction that nothing can be changed … The…

  • WordPress owns the Internet

  • Why We Post: The Anthropology of Social Media

    Great introductory video to this fascinating project undertaken by digital anthropologists at UCL:

  • Peter Thiel secretly backed Hulk Hogan

    A really unusual addition to my growing catalogue of digital elites flexing their social, cultural and political muscles. Peter Thiel secretly backed Hulk Hogan’s case against Gawker: Peter Thiel, a billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist, helped fund the case brought by the wrestler, Terry Gene Bollea, better known as Hulk Hogan, against Gawker, said a person…