Mass Media: Old and New

A range of PowerPoint Presentations focused on new and old forms of Mass Media, including globalisation and the digital social world.

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 […]

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: A New Digital 2-Step?

Of the four main models of media effects that developed predominantly in the latter part of the 20th century and are conventionally taught in a-level sociology, three have in their different ways managed to carve-out varying degrees of theoretical relevance in the 21st century: The Hypodermic Syringe model has, for example, swivelled to focus on […]

Media Matters: Some Free Texts

All of the stuff on offer here is what I’d generally call “Texts for Teachers” in the sense they’re likely to appeal – in all or more-likely part – to anyone teaching the sociology of the media. None are what I’d classify as “Media Sociology” texts, per se, but all in their different ways can […]

New Media: The Rise of the Selfie

Sociology Media Specifications have, in recent years, started to focus a little more on the rise of new forms of media, particularly social media like Facebook and Twitter, but one area that’s not particularly well-covered is the idea of Selfie culture – either as a personally-shareable form or, increasingly, as an integral aspect of something […]

New Media, New(s) Values?

The concept of news values – the basic principles journalists use to guide their decisions about what constitutes “news” – has been a staple of media sociology since Galtung and Ruge’s (1965) taxonomy (classification) identified the various basic requirements “stories must generally satisfy” if they were to qualify as news. As you might expect, this […]

Visual Media: Study Booklet

Following hard on the heels of the previous “visual media” offering comes this 18-page Pdf Study Booklet. It’s packed to the rafters with information presented in a variety of simple, visually-attractive, ways under six main headings with sub-headings as required: New Media: changes, digital optimism and pessimism Ownership and Control: trends, patterns, theories. Globalisation: cultural […]

Understanding Media and Culture: Free Textbook

Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication (to give it its full title) is a textbook, released under a Creative Commons licence by the University of Minnesota, that’s free to read, copy and share – which makes it especially useful for schools / colleges or students on a tight budget. Under this particular […]

New Media: WeChat and the Chinese New Year.

One of the nice things about running Dorset’s Most Popular Sociology Blog (*) is that from time-to-time we get to feature the work of Richard Driscoll’s students at the Shenzhen College of International Education in China. Previous posts have, for example, examined ideas as diverse as Cultural Capital, Parental Involvement in Education, Social Identity and Matriarchy […]

The Dark Side of Family Life: Domestic Abuse

The issue of domestic abuse has hit the headlines recently with the start of both the 2018 World Cup and not-uncoincidentally, a “Give Domestic Abuse the Red Card” campaign promoted by a range of police forces and widely-reported in both old and new media. The campaign highlights the relationship between domestic violence (defined in terms […]

Globalisation and the Digital World: Revision Stuff

Colourful PowerPoint Presentation summarising the OCR Globalisation and the Digital World Unit, plus a range of 6 / 9 mark exam practice questions. It’s somehow typical that you see nothing about this OCR A-Level Sociology Unit for months and then, just as you’ve posted a “6 week course” guide, you stumble across a couple of […]

Sociology Revision Booklets: 3. Mass Media

The third in our occasional series covering free revision resources on the web looks at the Mass Media (as you’ve probably guessed from the title). The number of resources is substantially less than previous offerings on Theory and Methods and Beliefs in Society but what they lack in number is more than made-up for by […]