The thrust of the argument was that if social science exists within the horizons of platform firms (i.e. it restricts itself to asking empirical questions which can be answered by platform generated data) then it can’t take platform capitalism as an object, instead leading it to fade into the background as a precondition for analysis. My point was largely about the empiricism of data science and (much) computational social science.
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This short introduction (starting around 7 mins 40 secs) to The Public and Their Platforms: Public Sociology in an Era of Social Media by myself and Lambros was part of a panel launching the new Public Sociology series by Bristol University Press.
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In our forthcoming book The Public and their Platforms, myself and Lambros Fatsis write about assembly devices. When watching the superb HBO documentary Into The Storm about QAnon (trailer below) I was struck by Cullen Hoback’s description of Cicada 3301 in terms of “collecting like minded others through an internet game”.
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I’ve had this passage from The Steep Approach to Garbadale by Iain Banks (pg 302-203) stuck in my head all day so i thought I’d share it: I think I am like a lot of people, you know: I’ve spent my life waiting for my life to start. It’s as […]
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I’ve just finished reading Robert Fine’s Being Stalked: A Memoir. It’s a thoughtful and self-therapeutic reflection by the late political theorist on his experience of being stalked by a former student in the 1990s. Throughout the book, I’ve felt an eery sense there are aspects of his diagnosis which touch upon the psychodynamics of platform capitalism and the epistemic chaos which it generates.
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
I was delighted to discover that one of my all time favourite lectures has been uploaded to YouTube in its original form. The 1991 Tanner Lectures by Charles Taylor were the basis for his Ethics of Authenticity, in which he investigates those “features of our contemporary culture which people feel very very worried about even as they seem to flow from the development of our civilisation”.
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Phil Brooker and I recently completed our second NCRM funded Python for Social Scientists bootcamp. For obvious reasons we switched from a four day intensive face-to-face bootcamp to a five week cross-platform (Slack, Wordpress, YouTube and e-mail) model for the second bootcamp. We reflected on this in a session for the Faculty of Education’s Ideas Lab on Thursday and a colleague suggested it might be a valuable exercise to distill some of the pedagogical principles underlying the project.
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I’ve been writing a lot recently about platform socialisation. I’m interested in how the proliferation of platforms brings about fundamental changes in the process of socialisation, as well as how we respond to these normatively and educationally.
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Social media has figured prominently in two literatures in recent years: the rise of authoritarian populism and the desirability of publicly engaged scholarship. These platforms offer incredible opportunities for more publicly engaged scholarship but they also make it more likely this scholarship will be politically contested by groups and individuals outside the academy.
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It struck me when reading this passage from Sheila Jasanoff’s introduction to Dreamscapes of Modernity how much critical realism can learn from ANT and Speculative Realism with regards to the reality of social construction.
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Farewell, Hand on Bollocks, Farewell, Basil Brush, Farewell, Seaside Drunk and Sea Cow You’re silent and weeping under history’s crush Your name’s your memorial now See you, German Helmet, So long, Tanked Up Ted, Goodbye, Sausage Stuffer and God Your names resonate through the roads of my head The names […]
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History’s been leaning on me lately;I can feel the future breathing down my neckAnd all the things I thought were trueWhen I was young, and you were tooTurned out to be brokenAnd I don’t know what comes nextIn a world that has decidedThat it’s going to lose its mindBe more […]
Estimated reading time: 52 seconds
I thought this was an intriguing call for papers: Guest edited by Dennis Bruining, Holly Randell-Moon, and Saartje TackThis special issue /Somatechnics: Journal of Bodies – Technologies –Power /invites contributions that critically examine how researchmethods, methodologies, theories, practices and institutions constitutesomatechnics. Somatechnics here is understood broadly as an approach thebody/ […]
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
