Category: Digital Sociology of Higher Education
This is a webinar I did in 2018 for the Critical Realism network. I thought it had been lost so I’m pleased to be able to post it online:
One thing I’ve been gradually noticing since I joined an education department a few years ago is how influential posthumanism is within education vis-a-vis other theoretical perspectives. I wouldn’t suggest this is anything other than an impressionistic judgement, based on the journals I choose to look at and the topics which stand out to me, […]
I’ve enjoyed reading Twitter: A Biography very much. I came to it after myself and Lambros Fatsis finally submitted The Public and Their Platforms to a publisher, which is a shame because it resonates with and would have helped us further develop the arguments in our book. At the heart of these is the question […]
This section from Jean Burgess and Nacy Baym’s new book on Twitter caught my imagination as a research method. It reminded me of this recent paper in The Sociological Review which used Facebook activity logs as an elicitation method. On pg 26 Burgess and Baym describe how they showed participants their Twitter timelines in order […]

Organised by Mark Carrigan, Ibrar Bhatt and Jeremy Knox In only a few months, the world has been transformed beyond recognition by Covid-19. As we face the prospect of many months, even years, until a vaccine can be produced and distributed, it seems increasingly clear there will be no return to normality. This online conference […]
For a number of years I’ve believed we urgently need a conversation about social media governance within higher education. This is a general term for a range of mundane issues which emerge from the use of social media by those within the university (academics, students, support staff, managers etc) in ways which are likely to […]

By Mark Carrigan and Pat Thomson Over the last decade social media has gone from being a fringe part of academic life to something which is mainstream. What was once regarded as a slightly suspicious activity has now been recognised as a legitimate means to keep connected within the academy and engage with audiences outside […]
This description of life within the publishing industry, from Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley loc 133, struck a chord with me: Every assistant I knew quietly relied on a secondary source of income: copyediting, bartending, waitressing, generous relatives. These cash flows were rarely disclosed to anyone but each other. It was an indignity to talk about […]
In recent years, we’ve seen the emergence of Digital Anthropology, Digital Geography and Digital Sociology as distinctive subdisciplines. However there has been relatively little dialogue between them, least of all with regards to common challenges they respond to and common concerns they share. We feel this absence matters for the subdisciplines themselves but also for […]
This looks brilliant. If only I could have seen it earlier! Thematic issue in Digital Capitalism Coordinators: Aitor Jiménez (University of Auckland) & César Rendueles (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) Vol 17 (2) June-December 2020 Teknokultura: Magazine of Digital Culture and Social Movements (Complutense University of Madrid) (https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/TEKN), indexed in Emerging Sources Citation Index, calls for […]