15. I cannot tell you how frustrating it has been, banging my head against this brick wall for so long. Despairing of better policy, I've now started stockpiling food. Though small compensation, it's good to know that industry insiders share my frustrations. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Silicon Valley is coming for faculty governance. The vultures are circling the corpse of the neoliberal American university. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

On #WorldBookDay, and in the context of digital technologies slowly eroding our ability to source trusted information, here are two books I read recently which gave me a better insight into what is going on in the world right now than any media report.

📢 New report out today! 📢 ➡️ Access the report here: repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeow/cepeo... 📊 What did we find? 🔸 Most of the socio-economic background (SEB) and ethnic inequalities in entry to professional occupations are driven by employer-side decisions made during the recruitment process

Not sure if it's just me but when I hear government representatives repeatedly state that 'the NHS is not on the table', I immediately assume that the NHS is on the table. #trump-starmer #tradedeal

I've been thinking this for a while now. Google actually restricts your access to information, and asks that you do no thinking. It no longer has any use value. The World's Largest Search Doesn't Want You to Search www.honest-broker.com/p/the-worlds...

wp.me/p3V8m9-ul Fab interview with @cairsti.bsky.social on @freedomtorunfilm.bsky.social and her research on Israel-Palestine here cc @uofglasgow.bsky.social @uofgsocsci.bsky.social @docmediacentre.bsky.social

NEW BOOK OUT TODAY!! SHARDED MEDIA Trump’s Rage Against the Mainstream @williammerrin.bsky.social Tech bros, Trump and trolls, have not toxified the Mainstream Media... they have replaced it. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

I'm doing an online seminar discussing my book, The Construction of Public Opinion in a Digital Age, next Wednesday (26th) at 2pm organised by the Centre for Science, Health & Data Comm Research @bournemouthuni.bsky.social All welcome: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-constr...

Makes a key point on combatting the far right – winning public consent has been a gradual process of shifting public thought and perception via mainstream & social media, cultural institutions & narratives capitalising on decades of political failure. 1/ www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/metapolitics...

Great thread from @georgemonbiot.bsky.social on the ideological inconsistency & the false promises of the far right. As much as taking on the outright dangerous elements, journalists, politicians & leftists need to think carefully how to expose promises that sound right & speak to a wide public 1/

This event seems great www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-constr.... It revolves around this book manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526180223/ by @catherinehapper.bsky.social. I leave here the info in case someone might find it interesting.

Media outlets all reporting 'welcome news' for the government as GDP grows - actually most people don't care about this, and this is not going to change the current position in respect of declining approval and the challenge from Reform at all.

"Researchers find that the more people use AI at their job, the less critical thinking they use."

@labourlewis.bsky.social is very right. This is a government stuck in the thinking of a decade ago when the public have moved on - totally disconnected from the broken promises of neoliberal 'growth'. My work shows empirically how this only benefits the right. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It's disturbing how legacy media outlets somehow normalise and legitimise the plausibility of DEI being a factor in the DC crash. Trump's sinister rhetoric should be seen as just that, not as a mantle on which to construct an illusion of "legitimate debate". It's horseshit, & should be seen as such

Cuts at Cardiff University - up to 400 jobs - are absolutely horrifying. All sorts of potential impacts - reduction in trained nurses in Wales, in language scholarship, and the terrible human cost to individuals and communities. Where does Labour's obsession with growth fit with this? #cardiffUCU

Looking forward to speaking about my new book at the Centre for Climate & Data Science, Exeter tomorrow c3ds.ex.ac.uk. Climate and environment are very present in the book and the new six filter model of opinion formation I present within it is informed in part by my research on climate.

I had been thinking that the unprecedented investment in AI had been a bit premature so not surprised to hear about #Deepseek. Good news for the planet, but my hope is it throws the whole agenda up in the air, or at least gives us pause to think - whose agenda? whose interests? - before we power on.

The headline is right - COVID too showed governments can lockdown the whole of society overnight when they act decisively. But people are looking for radical changes to the system, not tweaks to how they get poorer and unhealthier (sadly they are getting Trump) www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Excellent article from @georgemonbiot.bsky.social on the totally wrongheaded approach from Labour to tackle the housing crisis by simply building more. The catastrophic impact of the financialisation of housing was exposed by the 2008 crash, but still it continues.

Can you imagine the faceless, brutal experience of claimants when AI is rolled out for the benefits system? Ken Loach might have to come out of retirement to make I, Daniel Blake: The Sequel (and it's even worse). www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Fascinating podcast in which Prof Andy Smith makes a compelling argument – that the cultural barriers around/lack of access to poetry represent a double injustice in both the social consequences of not being ‘cultured’ and in being deprived of something with real value to those who read it.

Just in time for #BurnsNight, this week, I got to see a manuscript of Auld Lang Syne - a truly global Scottish export! Housed in the grand Mitchell Library in Glasgow.

1. The UK government’s pursuit of GDP growth at all costs is an assault on our natural wealth, which will impoverish us all. It might be able to massage the headline figures by converting the living world into money, but it does not improve our lives.🧵

This sounds grimly plausible theconcernedbird.substack.com/p/elon-musks...

Came out of #ACompleteUnknown with all those wonderful Dylan songs swimming around in my head - there might be some historical 'errors' (I don't care anyway) but the one thing the film got absolutely right was to put the music at the centre.

On Wednesday 22 January I'll be in conversation with Jim Phillips, author of Coalfield Justice, about his research with Scottish miners who were convicted of offences during the 1984-5 strike and their successful campaign for justice. Glasgow University, 3pm. Details 🔽

Cost of living crisis and the climate crisis have the same roots, and the same solution: on how far out politicians are in predicting what is to come: 'they are precisely wrong, rather than being roughly right'. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Among the 19 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 but did not vote at all in 2024, a YouGov poll found 29% said they declined to vote for Harris over her support for Israel's assault on Gaza--more than any other issue including the economy (24%) and immigration (11%)

Getting rid of 'under-performers' or an ideological purge? Shameless. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Good points in this article about the importance of validation, listening to and feeling listened to by others which is central to the spread of information on Facebook, Whatsapp, etc - lots about this in my own book. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

After everything that’s happened this week to expose the dangers of letting Big Tech CEOs set the agenda, Labour announce this. If anything, AI is subject to even less oversight, and its development even less transparent than social media. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

They’re not doing it on video with $900k watches, like Zuckerberg, but the way corporate US is running away from its climate commitments now Trump is in office is really significant. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

“As a floating signifier that has no clear cause identified, the COLC can be easily attached to different policy programmes… Consequently, the COLC… becomes the battleground within which the range of actors aiming to penetrate public debate wage a ‘war of positions’ to construct a ‘problem space’”

What ideological work does the term ‘cost of living crisis’ do? And what does MoneySavingExpert Martin Lewis have to do with it? Really enjoyed this new article from Isaac Hoff and @catherinehapper.bsky.social Great example of critical (media) sociology journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

New article from Isaac Hoff & I exploring the cost of living crisis (COLC) as an example of a media 'keyphrase' which obscures the longer term, systematic problems which produce the crisis, and which promotes short-term ineffectual solutions from politicians. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

A lot of people seem surprised, even disappointed, that Zuckerberg has capitulated so quickly - I recommend reading @jillian.bsky.social Silicon Values. The capitulation to state lobbying and pressure was simply hidden from view before.

Big Tech/platforms owners are (and could never not be) intensively political players – in my book, I singled out Zuckerberg operating under the guise of ‘neutrality’ which is all fine and dandy until the point where his interests are threatened. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Finally. The realisation that you can't fact check reality. #ShardedMedia @catherinehapper.bsky.social @williammerrin.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Empty words from elites (politicians, mainstream journalists, even some academic experts) on urgent need to tackle #disinformation when they are consistently orientating around (and amplifying) social media talking points, most often because it is politically expedient to do so 1/2

I’ve only ever read two graphic novels…maybe now I’ll read a third.

A first look at tomorrow's front page of The National 📰 BBC is disastrously failing with its Gaza reporting

Really enjoyed returning to the Communist Manifesto with this critical re-reading. Two points linger: the unresolved question of the uncontrollable nature of technologies as part of 'productive forces' & just how much was there that we now see as newer ideas (eg Mark Fisher’s capitalist realism).

Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes announces she's quit the paper because her editors wouldn't print a cartoon going after Big Tech and media oligarchs paying tribute to to Trump A new low in mainstream media's post-Trump meltdown anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-qui...

@catherinehapper.bsky.social, thank you for visiting Tübingen and delivering such an insightful talk on your new book, "The Construction of Public Opinion in a Digital Age.“ What a stimulating exchange of ideas and thought-provoking discussions.

Just heading home from a wonderful visit to Tübingen and very grateful for the deep engagement with the questions raised in my new book, lots to think about, thanks again to @zurstiege.bsky.social for inviting me!

An amazing piece of work, thought-provoking, and inspiring!!!

Finally! My new book, The Construction of Public Opinion in a Digital Age is out, order it here: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526180223/ It offers a new perspective on digital media & social change, connecting the dots between media engagement, socio-economic conditions & lived experience.