Digital Sociology Podcast

For this episode I spoke to Michael Rosino about his book Debating the Drug War: Race, Politics, and the Media which comes from a detailed analysis of the discourse on drug policy and race in newspapers and the comment sections of their online versions. Michael tells me about the discourses he identified which often deny racism and racial oppression as a factor in patterns of criminalisation of groups in drug related crime statistics. Michael is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Molloy College, Long Island, New York and you can follow him on Twitter @michaelrosino  You can listen to the episode and subscribe on the Anchor website via the link below or by searching for “Digital Sociology Podcast” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever else you get podcasts. This will be the last episode for a while but I hope to be back with some more in the future. However, in the meantime I will be launching a new series of my Social Theory Podcast in the next couple of weeks.

For this episode I spoke to Peter Bloom  who is a Professor of Management at the University of Essex, Owain Smolović Jones who is Director of the Open University's Research into Employment, Empowerment and Futures academic centre of excellence and Jamie Woodcock who is Senior Lecturer at the Open University. We talk about their new book Guerilla Democracy: Mobile Power and Revolution in the 21st Century which is a theoretically sophisticated analysis of digital politics. We have a fascinating chat about different examples of radical collective action (from striking cinema and restaurant workers to anti-vaxxers and the storming of the Capitol) and the guests suggest some creative and challenging ways of understanding these events. What role have digital technologies and networks played in these events? Do they enable easier and more effective political action? Are these digitally facilitated resistances only disruptive or can they lead to constructive political alternatives? You can follow Peter on Twitter @pbloombk, Owain @SunnOwain and Jamie @jamie_woodcock You can listen to the episode and subscribe on the Anchor website via the link below or by searching for “Digital Sociology Podcast” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever else you get podcasts.

This episode is a really great chat I had with Ben Jacobsen and David Beer both of The University of York. We talk about their new book Social Media and the Automatic Production of Memory Classification, Ranking and the Sorting of the Past which is an exploration of the ways in which social media engages with memory and how this becomes significant for their platforms. They focus on the "Facebook Memories" app within the Facebook platform which generates reminders to users of previous posts, photos or other content. We talk about what kinds of memories Facebook values and how it draws in previous interactions to create new content which is likely to produce more engagement in the present. They tell me about how the distinction between a "real" memory and one created by Facebook is blurring and how the platform's perspective on what memories are valuable differ from those of users. This also tells us a lot about the role which the platform plays in creating or assessing the value of memories. You can read more about their work in an LSE blog post. You can follow Ben on Twitter @bn_jacobsen and find David's website here.

In this episode I spoke to Scott Timcke who is a comparative historical sociologist, with an interest in race, class, and technology in modernity. He is a research associate with the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Social Change and a fellow at the University of Leeds’ Centre for African Studies. The basis of our discussion is Scott's book Algorithms and the end of Politics: How Technology Shapes 21st Century American Life which was published in 2021 by Bristol University Press. Scott tells about how algorithms and processes of datafication are influencing how politics functions. In particular, how the role which particular form of capitalism which has been enabled by the internet and digital technologies and networks affects politics. We talk about credit rating systems, the hidden ways in which we are influenced, Trump and the progress which needs to be made on considerations of race in our analysis of politics and technology amongst many other things. It was was really fascinating to talk to Scott who has immense knowledge on how technology and politics function and is a great communicator. I mention that Scott has been on my other podcast but as things have panned out this episode has come out before the other ones have. But those new Social Theory Podcasts will be coming out in a few weeks (after this current run of the Digital Sociology Podcast). You can follow Scott on Twitter @scotttimcke and read his previous book Capital, State & Empire: The New American Way of Digital Warfare via the University of Westminster Press website (Open Access).

There has been a huge gap since the last episode as life, work and then Covid got in the way. I will be putting out a few episodes over the next few weeks which have all been recorded recently with the exception of this first interview with Mark Wong. This was recorded in 2019 and was intended to be the first of a series which I didn't manage to do at the time. But Mark's work is fascinating to reflect on in 2021 as he has done fascinating work on "Hidden Youth", that is, young people who spend all or most of their time at home engaging with other people solely online. This has been a familiar experience to many people over the last 18 months or so which makes Mark's research and insights more important than ever. Mark tells me about this growing phenomenon and the experiences of people he spoke to which challenge some of the perceptions of people who spend much of their time physically alone at home. The "Hidden Youth" are not necessarily isolated or disconnected, rather, they are highly connected with others and well-informed about cultural issues and trends. Also, in many cases digital communication facilitated more meaningful and emotional engagement and connection. Central to Mark's work is a comparison between "Hidden Youth" in Scotland and in Hong Kong and we talk about some of the differences between these two contexts. Mark Wong is a Lecturer in Public Policy and Research Methods in the School of Social & Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. You can read Mark's article on "Hidden Youth" in New Media & Society and in his university repository. You can follow Mark on Twitter @UoG_MarkWong

In this episode I am talking to Elinor Carmi who is a Postdoc Research Associate in Digital Culture & Society at the University of Liverpool. She tells me about how her experience of working in radio and music production and as a feminist has influenced her current analysis of digital media work. In particular we discuss her comparison and analysis of early 20th century telephone operators and contemporary online content moderators. Elinor suggests that there are similarities between the ways in which (usually female) telephone operators were not only responsible for connecting calls but for maintaining the smooth front end experience for callers. One of the key tasks required of them was to distinguish between "message" and "noise" and remove the latter. Content moderators have to make similar distinctions in with online content by removing violent, sexual and other content which doesn't fit with the values which the platform wishes to present. The power of this analysis is made stark through the example of how Facebook considers male nipples to be "message" and female nipples "noise".  You can follow Elinor on Twitter  @Elinor_Carmi You can read Elinor's article 'The Hidden Listeners: Regulating the Line from Telephone Operators to Content Moderators' in the International Journal of Communication https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/8588 Elinor's article 'Cookies – More than Meets the Eye' in the journal Theory, Culture & Society

In this episode of the Digital Sociology Podcast I spoke to Susan Halford who is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bristol and the President of the British Sociological Association.  Amongst other things she explains the emergence "semantic web" to me and we discuss why this is of interest to sociologists and what sociology my have to offer in understanding it. If the web is a massive database of documents then the semantic web is a way of identifying and connecting "entities" within those documents (WolframAlpha is an example of a basic version of the semantic web). Susan says that this is a significant ontological task of identifying what kinds of things do and do not exist in this space. For the semantic web to develop  huge amounts of data on all kinds of topics would need to be gathered and analysed which would also require decisions to be made about what kinds of data to include and exclude.  We also discuss about the benefits and challenges of working working across the social sciences and computer sciences.  I ask Susan about a paper she wrote with Mike Savage in which they outline a fascinating reading of the work of Thomas Piketty, Robert Putnam and Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett. They propose the approach taken by these authors can be applied as "symphonic social science" which could be used to approach big data.  https://research-information.bristol.ac.uk/en/publications/speaking-sociologically-with-big-data(37fbb772-fa88-4371-974b-dd91ce57d86a).html Susan also offers some of her opinions on why sociologists are sometimes a bit scared to work with "big data" and how we might be able to overcome this. 

 In this episode of the Digital Sociology Podcast I am talking to Huw Davies who is a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. Huw tells me about his research into young peoples' use of technology (and particularly the internet). His research has shown that there are significant social class differences between how young people of different social class backgrounds tend to use technologies. However, this doesn't always follow the patterns we might expect. He has found from his detailed research with young people that many might not be engaging with the school curriculum on digital literacy (for instance) but nevertheless have sophisticated skills and are quite entrepreneurial with online and creative activities. The two papers of Huw's we discussed were: Davies HC and Eynon R (2018) Is digital upskilling the next generation our ‘pipeline to prosperity’? New Media and Society. DOI: 10.1177/1461444818783102. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444818783102 Davies HC (2018) Learning to Google: Understanding classed and gendered practices when young people use the Internet for research. New Media & Society 20(8): 2764–2780. DOI: 10.1177/1461444817732326. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444817732326?journalCode=nmsa Huw is one of the conveners of the British Sociological Associations's Digital Sociology study group (along with me and a few others) which you can follow on Twitter @bsadigitalsoc

On the latest Digital Sociology Podcast I am talking to Dr Jess Drakett who is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Leeds Beckett University. Jess shares some fun and fascinating insights from her PhD research  into representations of gender in meme culture and sexism in the tech industry. She conducted qualitative, discourse analysis of probably the most commonly used memes - "image macros". These are usually an image with white writing overlaid at the top and bottom.

The research looked into how humour is used in the very rule bound world of memes both by applying the format of a particular image macro to a new and context, subverting the form or commenting on it (as with the one above).
A big part of the analysis was how memes create collective identities for those who know the rules and the references but are also exclusionary for those who don't and if they are the target of the memes with many being sexist and misogynistic.
The other part of Jess's research was into the use of humour in a workplace context in the programming industry. She found similar kinds of humour used in the tech industry and memes themselves as facilitators of this with image macros being pasted up on workplace walls.
Jess talks a bit about the challenges of conducting research on memes but also that some of the most useful resources are ones which academic researchers wouldn't usually draw on like the "Know Your Meme" database:
https://knowyourmeme.com/
You can read Jess's paper on her meme research 'Old jokes, new media – Online sexism and constructions of gender in Internet memes' in the journal Feminism & Psychology
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0959353517727560
However, that version doesn't include images (due to the copyright concerns of the publishers) but the pre-print version of the paper does:
http://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/4406/
You can follow Jess on Twitter @jessicadrakett
You can listen to the podcast on Anchor or download and subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever else you get podcasts.


  For this episode of the Digital Sociology Podcast I spoke to Nick Couldry who is Professor of Media, Communication and Social Theory at the London School of Economics He suggests that digital platforms are appropriating "human life without limit" as all aspects of our life become transformed into data. Nick and his co-author Ulises A. Mejias describe this as a form of big data colonialism as it is a process through which our lives are deemed apt for extraction and appropriation without payment (like the raw materials of the new world were by colonisers). We also talked about Nick's book The Mediated Construction of Reality, written with Andreas Hepp, which suggests ways in which we can take proper account of the role which media play in the ways in which we understand the world. In particular, we focused on how data is shaping our experience and understanding of reality. Here is the website for Nick's forthcoming book is: https://colonizedbydata.com/ Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias 'Data Colonialism: Rethinking Big Data's Relation to the Contemporary Subject' Television & New Media https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1527476418796632?journalCode=tvna Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp The Mediated Construction of Reality http://politybooks.com/the-mediated-construction-of-reality/