In this interesting debate from the iai.tv the “outspoken philosopher of science” Steve Fuller (also SI blogger and Warwick sociologist) debates Cory Doctorow and Kate Russell on the meaning of privacy in contemporary society. I’m pretty hostile to Fuller’s argument here but there’s some… Read More ›
Mediated Matters 
Welcome to Mediated Matters, a regular weekly column series by Casey Brienza on the sociology of the media and culture. New installments are posted on Monday.
Escher Girls: bodies don’t work that way….
This great Tumblr blog collates and critiques the frequently absurd representations of women in comics. This is an issue which seems to have come to new-found prominence partly through social media, with the much shared Avengers graphic below only the… Read More ›
Listening to Wikipedia
What does Wikipedia sound like? It probably never occurred to you to ask that question. But this website provides an answer. There’s a description below the image of the meanings of the sounds used. I really like this project. What can initially… Read More ›
TV game shows and social change
The jokes are usually about the speedboats. And, granted, it is funny when two people who live somewhere in the midlands or the north of England are shown a speedboat that they have just failed to win. But there is… Read More ›
The Media Sociology of that ‘Car Crash’ Farage/UKIP Interview
United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) — and especially its leader Nigel Farage — has been under enormous scrutiny in the run-up to the European elections next week, where UKIP is expected to score very well, embarrassing all the major parties… Read More ›
Giving voice through animation: “my first crush”
This charming animation is based on interviews the artist conducted with people about their first encounters with love. As she puts it, “their animal counterparts tells their stories of humor and heartache” and, through doing so, give voice to these… Read More ›
Julian Assange in conversation with Slavoj Žižek
Last year, whistleblower website WikiLeaks released three of the biggest ever leaks of classified information in history: the Iraq War Logs, the Afghanistan War Logs and Cablegate. Since then the world has undoubtedly changed. Ambassadors have resigned amid scandals exposed… Read More ›
Call for Papers: Media Sociology Preconference, ASA 2014
Call for Papers: Media Sociology Preconference, ASA 2014 Venue: Mills College (Oakland, CA) Date: August 15, 2014 We invite submissions for a second preconference on media sociology to be held at Mills College (Oakland, CA) on Friday, August 15, 2014. (This is… Read More ›
Pride, Propaganda and Poverty Porn: On Benefits and Proud
by Tracy Jensen A few weeks after my first post on the eruption of this genre (where I examined We All Pay Your Benefits broadcast on the BBC), Five broadcast its own contribution to poverty porn, On Benefits and Proud. … Read More ›
The TEDification of #HigherEd? Negotiating between the accessibly simple and the simplistically accessible
There’s a particularly incisive rehearsal in the Guardian of what has become a well established critique of TED. There’s a lot of this I agree with but I nonetheless find the general thrust of the argument really problematic: So what is TED… Read More ›
The Politics of Zombies
A few months ago I wrote about the use of zombies to represent crowds in films like World War Z. My basic point being that zombies are a shorthand for portraying the irrationalism of mass assemblies which threaten the social order. Leaving… Read More ›
The Future of Scholarly Publishing
What does the future hold for scholarly publishing? Most would agree that the present system is unsustainable yet there remains little consensus on what could and should replace it. Patrick Dunleavy at the LSE Impact Blog makes a compelling case… Read More ›
Why Slavoj Zizek is a Waste of Space for the Social Scientifically Literate Left
Slavoj Zizek may be great at beating up on grand old men of the anti-establishment such as Chomsky, but he is a total waste of space for a self-described ‘Left’ that wants to remain politically relevant in the 21st century…. Read More ›
CfP: Quantified Self and Self-Tracking
In the last few years there has been a significant increase in public and academic interest in the use of devices or techniques for the accumulation, aggregation and analysis of personal data. Apps for mobile phones such asTrack My Run and… Read More ›
Reflecting on the Riots
In the first episode of the LSE British Politicast, we take a closer look at the Riots of 2011. This podcast looks back on the riots, presenting sociological and criminological perspectives on why they happened and what, if anything, can be… Read More ›
What is ‘academic blogging’?
This question has been on my mind a lot this week. Largely because it occurred to me that I have yet to encounter a non-trivial answer to it. Sure, it’s easy to say academic blogging is blogging by academics. But what does this really tell… Read More ›
Facebook Graph Search: @PaulBernalUK explains what this is all about…
The first thing to ask whenever Facebook (or indeed any other business) releases a new product or service is what’s in it for them. In the case of Facebook’s new ‘Graph Search’, as in most things Facebook, the answer’s pretty… Read More ›
Looking for a new year’s resolution? @PaulbernalUK offers a suggestion some readers may find unthinkable
If you’re looking for a New Year’s Resolution – have you considered leaving Facebook? There are many reasons to do so, and getting more compelling all the time – all it takes is a little resolution. 1) Privacy Everyone should… Read More ›
Sandy Hook and Call of Duty: the toxic relationship between “violent” games and the media
Following the tragic events of Friday in Newtown, Connecticut, a friend and I had been trying to guess how long it would take the media to blame allegedly “violent” video games for the latest spree killing. We didn’t need to… Read More ›
The Web is See Through
88% of the self-generated, sexually explicit online images and videos of young people their analysts encountered had been taken from their original location and uploaded onto other websites, shows a recent study by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Read the… Read More ›
International Number Ones
Click on the image below to explore this visualisation of international number ones (as the people behind it point out: every country is the best at something!) from the wonderful website Information is Beautiful.
Turning Research into Film
The short, professionally made film Rufus Stone is the key output of the three-year ‘Gay and Pleasant Land?’ research project led by Bournemouth University academic, Dr Kip Jones. The stories that form the foundation of the script for Rufus Stone are entirely… Read More ›
Exploring the Emergence of Underground Musical Worlds
In this podcast from the Sociology@Warwick Seminar Series in May 2012, Nick Crossley from Manchester University discusses his use of social network analysis to explore the early development of punk and post-punk musical worlds in the UK. Read more about this research here and here…. Read More ›
Who Do You Really Want to Be? Dr Mayim Bialik’s commencement speech
Being editor is great. You get to impose things you love on the readers! Just joking. But, in all honesty, whether you are a Big Bang Theory fan or not, this is a lovely, useful, and inspiring commencement speech. Dr… Read More ›
Academia 2.0
Do ‘prestigious’ journals make academics lazy? An unlikely parallel with the art world Training, teaching or empowering people with social media? A case study of a university’s digital strategy Podcast with Martin Eve about Open Source Academic Publishing The ‘prestige’ of journals in… Read More ›
SI Top 10 #10 – Comics and Censorship: Is It Really about You?
News broke this past Friday of an American citizen arrested by a Canadian Customs officer at the US-Canada border after manga deemed to be child pornography was discovered on his laptop. Although no real children were harmed in the creation… Read More ›
Women and Muscles: a history in image
Venus with Biceps: a Pictorial History of Muscular Women by David L. Chapman and Patricia Vertinsky is an invaluable collection of rare images of athletic women in the 19th and 20th centuries. Maria Popova at Brainpickings has written a fantastic… Read More ›