Mass Killings: The Role of the Media

Short film exploring the role of the media in relation to fame-seeking mass killers.

Sociology Flipbooks

A range of Sociology Flipbooks covering Theory, Methods, Education, Deviance, Media and Revision.

Plus 3 bonus issues of Sociology Shortcuts Magazine.

Researching Media Inequalities: Beyond Bechdel

While the Bechdel Test – does a film contain two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than men? – is a useful way of highlighting broad gender inequalities in the media, it wasn’t designed to capture anything but the most basic forms of gender inequality, particularly and most-notably in Hollywood […]

Sociology Shortcuts Magazine No.2: The Mass Media Issue

The first proper issue of Sociology Shortcuts Magazine (Issue No.1: Risk Society was basically just me doodling around on a new Desktop Publisher to see if I could produce some sort of “magazine format” document with it. Turns out I could) sees an expansion in pagination (as we Media Publishers say. Apparently) and the introduction […]

Augmented Reality: A Variable-Sum Game?

The distinction between digital optimism and digital pessimism is a well-known one in the sociology of the media and comparisons of their respective positions are a fairly commonplace feature of any discussion of the social impact of different forms of new media.  This is particularly the case in relation to something like social media where […]

Media Methods and Representations: The Bechdel Test

The Bechdel Test is a very simple type of content analysis, created by Alison Bechdel in a 1985 episode (“The Rule”) of her comic-strip “Dykes to Watch Out For”, that tests how women – and by extension men – are historically represented in Hollywood films. Aside from throwing-up, so to speak, some interesting and frankly-quite-surprising […]

Sceptical Sociology: New Media and Digital Nativism

Like any scientific endeavour, one of the virtues of sociology is its scepticism – and one area that’s always ripe for a sceptical approach is new media and the various claims made on its behalf. One such claim is Prensky’s (2001) concept of the “digital native”, something that has become widely used in both press […]

Media Effects: Althusser and Interpellation

In a previous post I suggested how it might be possible to breathe new relevance into the classic 2-Step Flow model of Media Effects (A New Digital 2-Step) and this post takes a similar Back to the Future approach to media effects by digging-up and dusting-down an idea – Interpellation – that’s been around since […]

Revision Mapping Mass Media

While the recently-posted Research Methods Revision Maps have a certain timeless and transcendental quality(?) when it comes to being reasonably up-to-date and applicable to a wide range of sociology specifications, the same probably can’t be said of this batch of Media Revision Maps. They were created for the AQA Spec around about the time my […]

PowerPoint: Defining Mass Media v2

When I posted the previous version of this PowerPoint Presentation I included the rider that I’d have a go at making it “More-Prezi” and “Less-PowerPoint”, by which I meant doing away with the semi-linear structure of the original and replacing it with the kind of open structure characteristic of Prezi Presentations. This, I’m happy to […]