David Gauntlett

Last updated

David Gauntlett (born 15 March 1971) is a British sociologist and media theorist, and the author of several books including Making is Connecting.

Contents

His earlier work concerned contemporary media audiences, and has moved towards a focus on the everyday making and sharing of digital media and social media and the role of these activities in self-identity and building creative cultures.

Career

Gauntlett graduated from the University of York in Sociology in 1992. [1] He completed an MA in Women's Studies at Lancaster University, then took his PhD. Afterwards, he taught at the University of Leeds from 1993 to 2002. Subsequently, he was appointed Professor of Media and Audiences at Bournemouth University. In 2006 he joined the School of Media, Arts and Design at University of Westminster as Professor of Media and Communications, becoming Co-Director of the Communications and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), from 2010 to 2015. From 2015 to 2017 he was Professor of Creativity and Design, and the Director of Research for Westminster School of Media, Arts and Design.

In 2018, he took up a role as a Canada Research Chair in the Faculty of Communication and Design at Ryerson University, Toronto.

Gauntlett's critique of media 'effects' studies sparked controversy in 1995, [2] [3] and since then he has published a number of books and research on the role of popular media in people's lives. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] In particular he has focused on the way in which digital media is changing the experience of media in general. [9] [10] [11] [12]

In 2007, he was shortlisted for the 'Young Academic Author of the Year' award in the Times Higher awards. [13]

In the 2008 book, Reading Media Theory, Barlow & Mills state: "David Gauntlett is a prominent, public academic, who has spent his career engaging in research activities which have deliberately involved the public, and have crossed the traditional divide between the academic community and the outside world." [14]

New creative research methods

This approach asks participants to make something as part of the research process. [15] Gauntlett's work of this kind began with Video Critical (1997), [16] in which children were asked to make videos about the environment, and then in a number of projects which are discussed in Creative Explorations (2007). [17] As well as studies in which participants have been invited to make video, diaries, collage, and drawings, Gauntlett has explored the use of Lego Serious Play as a tool in sociology and social research. [18] This approach makes use of metaphor and invites participants to build metaphorical models of their identities. The process of making something, and then reflecting upon it, aims to give a more nuanced insight into participants' feelings or experiences. [17]

This work has been supported by awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. [19] [20]

Media Studies 2.0

In 2007, Gauntlett published online the article Media Studies 2.0, which created some discussion amongst media studies educators. [21] [22] [23] [24] The article argues that the traditional form of media studies teaching and research fails to recognise the changing media landscape in which the categories of 'audiences' and 'producers' blur together, and in which new research methods and approaches are needed. Andy Ruddock has written that Gauntlett's "ironic polemic" includes "much to value", and acknowledges that the argument "is more strategy than creed", but argues that audiences still exist, and experience mass media specifically as audience, and so it would be premature to dispose of the notion of 'audience' altogether. [23] In other areas there has been less acceptance: Andy Medhurst at Sussex University wrote of Media Studies 2.0, 'Isn't it odd that whenever someone purportedly identifies a new paradigm, they see themselves as already a leading practitioner of it?'

Making is Connecting

In 2008 Gauntlett proposed 'the Make and Connect Agenda', an attempt to rethink audience studies in the context of media users as producers as well as consumers of media material. This argues that there is a shift from a 'sit-back-and-be-told culture' to a 'making-and-doing culture', and that harnessing creativity in both Web 2.0 and in other everyday creative activities will play a role in tackling environmental problems.

These ideas are developed further in his best-known book 'Making is Connecting: The social meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0'. [25]

The Second Edition of 'Making is Connecting' was published in 2018, and included additional sections on the creative process. [26]

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polymath</span> Individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects

A polymath is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manuel Castells</span> Spanish sociologist and politician

Manuel Castells Oliván is a Spanish sociologist. He is well known for his authorship of a trilogy of works, entitled The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. He is a scholar of the information society, communication and globalization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Creativity</span> Forming something new and somehow valuable

Creativity is a characteristic of someone or some process that forms something new and valuable. The created item may be intangible or a physical object.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony Giddens</span> British sociologist (born 1938)

Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens is an English sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern sociologists and is the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29 languages, issuing on average more than one book every year. In 2007, Giddens was listed as the fifth most-referenced author of books in the humanities. He has academic appointments in approximately twenty different universities throughout the world and has received numerous honorary degrees.

New media are communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for the influx of interactive CD-ROMs for entertainment and education. The new media technologies, sometimes known as Web 2.0, include a wide range of web-related communication tools such as blogs, wikis, online social networking, virtual worlds, and other social media platforms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zygmunt Bauman</span> Polish sociologist and philosopher (1925–2017)

Zygmunt Bauman was a Polish-born sociologist and philosopher. He was driven out of the Polish People's Republic during the 1968 Polish political crisis and forced to give up his Polish citizenship. He emigrated to Israel; three years later he moved to the United Kingdom. He resided in England from 1971, where he studied at the London School of Economics and became Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds, later Emeritus. Bauman was a social theorist, writing on issues as diverse as modernity and the Holocaust, postmodern consumerism and liquid modernity.

<i>Bricolage</i> Creation of an artwork from a diverse range of things that happen to be available

In the arts, bricolage is the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available, or a work constructed using mixed media.

Communication design is a mixed discipline between design and information-development concerned with how media communicate with people. A communication design approach is concerned with developing the message and aesthetics in media. It also creates new media channels to ensure the message reaches the target audience. Due to overlapping skills, some designers use graphic design and communication design interchangeably.

Francis David Peat (Born 18 April 1938 Waterloo, England died 6 June 2017 in Pari Italy) was a holistic physicist and author who has carried out research in solid state physics and the foundation of quantum theory.

LEGO SERIOUS PLAY is a facilitation methodology developed at The Lego Group. Since 2010 it is available under an open source community-based model. Its goal is improving creative thinking and communication. People build with Lego bricks 3-dimensional models of their ideas and tell stories about their models. Hence the name "serious play".

Jeffrey Weeks is a gay activist and an historian and sociologist specialising in work on sexuality.

Design thinking refers to the set of cognitive, strategic and practical procedures used by designers in the process of designing, and to the body of knowledge that has been developed about how people reason when engaging with design problems.

Graeme Turner is an Australian professor of cultural studies and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Queensland. During his institutional academic career he was a Federation Fellow, a President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, founding Director of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, and Convenor of the ARC Cultural Research Network.

John Brookshire Thompson is a British sociologist. He is a sociology professor at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Jesus College.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tudor Rickards</span> British writer

Tudor Rickards is a self-published author of non-fiction and fiction, a business academic, and a scientist. He is Professor Emeritus at University of Manchester and formerly Professor of creativity and Organisational change at Alliance Manchester Business School. His fiction works include The Unnamed Threat: A Wendy Lockinge Mystery (2019), Seconds Out (2018) and Chronicles of Leadership (2016). His non-fiction includes Tennis Matters: A Leaders We Deserve Monograph (2015), Tennis Tensions (2015), The Manchester Method (2015) and The Double Houdini (2016).

A significant construct in language learning research, identity is defined as "how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is structured across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future". Recognizing language as a social practice, identity highlights how language constructs and is constructed by a variety of relationships. Because of the diverse positions from which language learners can participate in social life, identity is theorized as multiple, subject to change, and a site of struggle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Burn (professor)</span> English professor and media theorist

Andrew Burn is an English professor and media theorist. He is best known for his work in the fields of media arts education, multimodality and play, and for the development of the theory of the Kineikonic Mode. He is Emeritus professor of Media at the UCL Institute of Education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Serious play</span>

The term serious play refers to an array of playful inquiry and innovation methods that serve as vehicles for complex problem-solving, typically in work-related contexts. Lego Serious Play is one of the best known examples; however, serious play methods also include improv theater, role play exercises, low fidelity prototyping, as well as certain simulations and gamification interventions, etc.

David Dennis Buckingham, is a media, communications and education scholar and retired academic.

David Hesmondhalgh is a British sociologist. He is currently Professor of Media, Music and Culture at the University of Leeds. His research focusses on the media and cultural industries, critical approaches to media in the digital age, and the sociology of music.

References

  1. ↑ "Recent Publications". Grapevine. Alumni Office, University of York (Autumn/Winter 1997): 23.
  2. ↑ David Gauntlett (1995), Moving Experiences: Understanding Television's Influences and Effects, London: John Libbey
  3. ↑ David Gauntlett (2005), Moving Experiences, second edition: Media Effects and Beyond, London: John Libbey
  4. ↑ Will Woodward (1999), 'Viewers admit their guilt at watching too much TV', The Guardian newspaper, Friday 30 April 1999
  5. ↑ David Gauntlett and Annette Hill (1999), TV Living: Television, Culture and Everyday Life, London: Routledge
  6. ↑ Charlie Peverett (2002), Review of 'Media, Gender and Identity' Archived 12 August 2008 at the Wayback Machine , HERO: The official online gateway to Higher Education, 2002
  7. ↑ AHRC Case Studies: Young People's Engagement with Online Immersive Worlds Archived 9 June 2008 at the Wayback Machine , Arts and Humanities Research Council, May 2008
  8. ↑ Dan Sabbagh (2008), 'Viewers Boys and girls stay in to play on BBC's virtual island Adventure Rock', The Times newspaper, 22 May 2008
  9. ↑ Julian McDougall (2007), 'Creative Transformations: What to do with "Media 2.0"?', In The Picture – The Media Education Magazine [ permanent dead link ], Issue 58, November 2007
  10. ↑ David Gauntlett (2000), 'A double dose of digital drivel', The Times Higher Education Supplement, 22 September 2000
  11. ↑ David Gauntlett, ed (2000), Web.Studies: Rewiring Media Studies For The Digital Age, London: Arnold
  12. ↑ David Gauntlett and Ross Horsley, eds (2004), Web.Studies: Second edition, London: Arnold
  13. ↑ Times Higher Education Supplement, Awards Shortlist Archived 5 November 2007 at the Wayback Machine , September 2007.
  14. ↑ David M. Barlow and Brett Mills (2008), Reading Media Theory: Thinkers, Approaches, Contexts, London: Pearson Education, p.422.
  15. ↑ University of Oslo (2007), Creative Production, Self-expression and Identity Archived 31 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine , Intermedia, University of Oslo
  16. ↑ David Gauntlett (1997), Video Critical: Children, The Environment and Media Power, London: John Libbey
  17. 1 2 David Gauntlett (2007), Creative Explorations: New approaches to identities and audiences, London: Routledge
  18. ↑ Anthea Lipsett (2005), 'Lego and professor click over research', The Times Higher Education Supplement, 8 April 2005
  19. ↑ Arts and Humanities Research Council, list of research awards
  20. ↑ Times Higher Education (2008), 'Grant winners', 7 February 2008
  21. ↑ British Film Institute, Media Studies Conference 2007 Archived 7 November 2007 at the Wayback Machine , 4–6 July 2007
  22. ↑ Transforming Audiences International Conference, 6–7 September 2007
  23. 1 2 Andy Ruddock (2008), 'Media Studies 2.0? Binge Drinking and Why Audiences Still Matter', Sociology Compass, Volume 2 Issue 1 Page 1-15, January 2008.
  24. ↑ 'Towards a Brave New World? The Media Studies 2.0 Debate' Archived 3 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine , presentation by Geoff Lealand, University of Waikato, at AMES conference, May 2007
  25. ↑ Gauntlett, David. (2011). Making is connecting : the social meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. ISBN   978-0-7456-5002-9. OCLC   682281412.
  26. ↑ Polity Press, 'Making is Connecting: Second Expanded Edition'
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.