Digital Sociology Podcast

In this episode I am speaking to Frank Pasquale who is Professor of Law at the University of Maryland. We talk about his work which has addressed the impact of big data and algorithmic processing on reputation, search and finance. We discussed how the data we generate an hour every day lives has enabled a drive to assess, rank and judge ourselves and others. He offer some insight as to why and how credit rating agencies have become so powerful and what impact they have. Frank also warns that critiques of data driven analysis and ranking can often just lead to more surveillance.We talk about the how big data can create discrimination as conclusions from one type of data can be applied to other areas of our lives. Frank stresses The importance of keeping human input into rankings and ratings.

You can follow Frank on Twitter @FrankPasquale and see his website at
http://www.frankpasquale.com/
The abstract to Frank's book The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms that Control Money and Information is here:

https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/books/96/

You can listen to the episode on the Anchor site and download or subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you usually get podcasts.

For this episode I spoke with Tom Brock who is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University.
He tells me about his research into e-sports and video games and how the changes in the political economy of video games leads to a more rational approach to games. Is this damaging to the experience of play if it becomes instrumentalised. He also suggests this potentially encourages a neo-liberal orientation to the self as we are encouraged to measure ourselves and our performance in terms of a vast array of metrics.
It was fascinating to hear about the embodied experience of elite video game playing including the strains put on bodies in order to compete at a high level and the insecure lifestyles of those hoping for a share in the potential riches of prize money or sponsorship.
As someone who is terrible at video games I really connected with they way in which Tom conceptualised the perverse pleasures of failure when playing games.
You can read more about what Tom is doing on his website and follow him on Twitter @tgjbrock
http://www.tgjbrock.co.uk/
The references for the articles of Tom's we discussed are below along with links.
TGJ. Brock, E. Fraser (2018). Is Computer Gaming a Craft? Prehension, Practice and Puzzle-Solving in Gaming Labour. Information, Communication and Society. 21(9), pp.1219-1233.
https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/620399/
T. Brock (2017). Videogame consumption: The apophatic dimension. Journal of Consumer Culture.pp.146954051668418-146954051668418.
https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/617975/
TGJ. Brock (2017). Roger Caillois and e-Sports: On the Problems of Treating Play as Work. Games and Culture. 12(4), pp.321-339.
https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/617954/
You can listen to the podcast on Anchor or subscribe and download through iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you usually get podcasts.

In this episode of the Digital Sociology Podcast I am talking to Kylie Jarrett who is a lecturer in Department of Media Studies at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. She writes and researches on internet cultures and has written on the “culture of search” inspired by Google. But in this episode we are mainly talking about her feminist analysis of digital labour. This is a concept which has been developed to describe the value which users of the commercial internet (and particularly social media) generate through their interactions. Through a critique of some strands of “autonomist” Marxist analysis she suggests that he gendered character of this “digital labour” is often overlooked and the novelty of this situation is overplayed. Some people (usually women) have long been contributing “free labour” necessary to the functioning and maintenance of capitalism (broadly speaking social reproduction). Kylie has suggested the concept of the "digital housewife" to describe this. Social media companies have just found a particularly effective means of mobilising and monetising our everyday interactions and the maintenance of our relationships and communities. In a very entertaining discussion Kylie tells me about how an annoyance with some people overlooking the tradition of feminist work which had established these points and the dismissal of of her reading of digital labour incited her anger which she channeled into the book.
Kylie Jarret's profile:
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/kylie-jarrett
Google and the culture of Search by Hillis, Petit and Jarrett:
https://books.google.com/books/about/Google_and_the_Culture_of_Search.html?id=0X_1HS13FbsC
Feminism, Labour and Digital Media: The Digital Housewife:
https://books.google.com/books/about/Feminism_Labour_and_Digital_Media.html?id=yY34CgAAQBAJ


You can follow Kylie on Twitter @kylzjarrett

In what is likely the most fun episode I spoke to Penny Andrews. This started out as a chat about Penny’s research into current research information systems, institutional repositories and academic social networking services such as academia.edu. Penny gives some fascinating insights from her research into how people use these systems and the political economy around in which they are integrated. I found it particularly fascinating to hear about how people increasingly have little choice but to use these systems which generate data and enable control of academic life by multinational corporations. Along the way there are some diversions in our chat into the state of academia, the pressures created by systems of measurement, digital capitalism and even Doctor Who and Charlie from Casualty. Warning! This is a wide-ranging chat which I considered cutting down to something more focused but actually the charm of this episode is in the shambolic loose character of it. Penny also tells me plenty about one of her other great passions; Ed Balls gifs!

Also, I recorded this about a year ago and it has taken me ages to upload this (sorry Penny) but most of the political diversions we go down are still mostly pertinent which perhaps says a lot about the state we're in. 

Penny has written about her fandom for Ed Balls and her role as the worlds most prominent producer of Ed gifs and read some of her articles on higher education and metrics at Wonkhe 

https://discoversociety.org/2017/07/05/every-day-can-be-ed-balls-day-in-uk-politics-fandom/

https://wonkhe.com/staff/penny-andrews/

You can follow Penny on Twitter @pennyb

In this episode of the Digital Sociology Podcast I spoke with Mark Carrigan. Because it has taken me ages to upload this podcast my introduction to Mark on the podcast is a bit out of date now. But Mark is the Digital Engagement Fellow at The Sociological Review and a researcher in the Culture Politics and Global Justice cluster in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge where he works on research on the digital university. I also mention that he runs the Sociological Imagination website which has since been closed down.

Mark is on Twitter @mark_carrigan

I have just changed over my podcast host from Soundcloud to Anchor. If you listen on a podcast app this shouldn't make any difference and you should get new episodes as normal. But if you usually listen through a browser on Soundcloud you will just need to go to my profile on the Anchor site instead.

For episode 13 of the Digital Sociology Podcast I had a chat with Karen Gregory who is a digital sociologist at the University of Edinburgh. She tells me about her work on the exploitation enabled by the rise of digital labour. She tells me about the importance of challenging the individualised and empowering picture of digital technologies and platforms which are often claimed to enable empowerment for individuals. We also discuss the relationship between right wing politics and the increase of digital work. Karen explains the relationship between gender, work and social reproduction and how feminist thought can help us to understand this. She also emphasises the importance of labour history for understanding the contemporary digital economy.

A few times Karen mentions a book called Lower Ed: The troubling rise of for-profit colleges in the new economy by Tressie McMillan Cottom. She also discusses Kylie Jarrett’s book Feminism, Labour and Digital Media: The Digital Housewife

See he

For this episode I spoke with Murray Goulden of the Horizon centre at the University of Nottingham and he told me about the projects he is working which, amongst other things, use digital traces as a memory aid as part of ethnographic research. To do this him and his colleagues have designed methods and technologies to extract data from people’s digital devices (with consent of course!) to present these data back to people. The participants were then encouraged to make sense of these data (which they wouldn’t usually see).

You can follow Murray on Twitter @murraygoulden

This episode was turning up in a lot of podcast apps in a shorter version so I have uploaded it again as a separate episode which will hopefully fix this. So if you have the first version as a 13 minute audio delete that one and download this (should be 39 minutes).

For this episode of the Digital Sociology Podcast I spoke to Harry Dyer about his work on online social platforms and identity. Harry tells me about his thoughts on the development and design of different platforms and how they make different actions and connections possible and restrict others.

Harry told me about what he has found from his research on the way in which young people use different platforms and the subtle ways they interpret and use platforms to present their identities. He tells me about the theoretical traditions he has drawn upon influenced by Erving Goffman and Karan Barad amongst others. I also here about the innovative way he has applied the analysis of comic books to social media. We also talk about

For this episode of the Digital Sociology Podcast I spoke to Harry Dyer about his work on online social platforms and identity. Harry tells me about his thoughts on the development and design of different platforms and how they make different actions and connections possible and restrict others.

Harry told me about what he has found from his research on the way in which young people use different platforms and the subtle ways they interpret and use platforms to present their identities. He tells me about the theoretical traditions he has drawn upon influenced by Erving Goffman and Karan Barad amongst others. I also here about the innovative way he has applied the analysis of comic books to social media. We also talk about whether communities are possible online and how the Facebook model of community differs from the “anonymous” one.

This is the first episode that I haven’t been able to edit properly. All of my previous episodes have included intro/outro music, stings and various bit

In this episode of the Digital Sociology Podcast I spoke to Mariya Stoilova who is working on a project called Global Kids Online. Mariya is based at the London School of Economics but the project is an international one which looks at the experiences, opportunities, risks and rights and how these relate to inequalities.

The project developed out of a previous one called EU Kids Online and Mariya has been working on developing an open source toolkit which is adaptable to countries in the global south. Central to their project is challenging the idea that the internet is a space dominated by risk but also one which provides opportunities for them. Conversely, there is also a "digital determinist" discourse which is equally simplistic which assumes that access to the internet will in itself produce more highly skilled and knowledgeable young people.

The research has produced findings which show a nuanced picture particularly around how risk is understood differently by children compare