Ben Light
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 125780 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Ben Light |
| NOMBRES | Ben |
| APELLIDO | Light |
| FIRMA | BEN LIGHT |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Salford |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0038-8979 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 19 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 357 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 18 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2006 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
YouTube sex edutainment
There has been mixed academic reception to classroom-based peer education pedagogy for sexual health, with criticism of limitations and logistical challenges of the method. However, as the sexuality education landscape grows to include social media interventions, this may create alternative opportunities for the future use of peer education. In this paper, we interrogate YouTube Sex Edutainment, where influencers create educational videos using e…
Sex education against the algorithm
Deplatforming of sexual content has increased across social media, usually operationalized by commercially charged, and algorithmically enforced, platform policies. This paper extends work on the algorithmic deplatforming of sex through the case study of how sex education content, or ‘sex edutainment’ on YouTube, is impacted by the platform’s algorithmic structures. Enrolling actor-network theory, we demonstrate the delegation work YouTube enacts…
Puritanisme sexuel et capitalisme numérique
Trois chercheur-es spécialistes des médias numériques signent ensemble aux presses du Massachusetts Institute of Technology un ouvrage consacré à la régulation de la sexualité sur les réseaux socio-numériques : NSFW. Sex, Humor, and Risk in Social Media [Paasonen, Jarrett et Light, 2019]. Susanna Paasonen, professeure à l’Université de Turku (Finlande), est connue pour son travail sur les pornographies numériques, dont elle explore les dimensions…
The Dick Pic
The combined rise of digital photography and social media has expanded what might be considered photo worthy. Among the pouting selfies and food stuffs of the day exists the ubiquitous dick pic. The mainstream media generally focuses on dick pics of the unsolicited kind, which, negatively positioned, are commonly associated with heterosexual harassment. Considering the ubiquity of dick pics across apps and platforms, research on the topic neverth…
Locked down apps versus the social media ecology
This article reports on focus groups exploring the best way to reach young men with vulgar comedy videos that provide sexual health information. Young people reported that they found the means by which the material was presented – as a locked down app – to be problematic, and that it would better be delivered through social media platforms such as YouTube. This would make it more ‘spreadable’. By contrast, adult sex education stakeholders thought…
Big Data, Method and the Ethics of Location
With the rise of geo-social media, location is emerging as a particularly sensitive data point for big data and digital media research. To explore this area, we reflect on our ethics for a study in which we analyze data generated via an app that facilitates public sex among men who have sex with men. The ethical sensitivities around location are further heightened in the context of research into such digital sexual cultures. Public sexual culture…
Data cultures of mobile dating and hook-up apps
The ethical and social implications of data mining, algorithmic curation and automation in the context of social media have been of heightened concern for a range of researchers with interests in digital media in recent years, with particular concerns about privacy arising in the context of mobile and locative media. Despite their wide adoption and economic importance, mobile dating apps have received little scholarly attention from this perspect…
Imagining the Internet
This is the ninth time a special issue of Information, Communication & Society has featured some of the most exciting scholarship emerging from the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR). The p
The rise of speculative devices
I attend to two areas of increasing significance in relation to Web 2.0 since its announcement in 2005. The first is a focus on the non-human in digital media research, and the second is the normalisation of dating apps in society. Building upon ideas from speculative design and speculative method, I introduce the idea of speculative devices, those things that are set in place based on a conjecture of an outcome. Drawing upon a case study of Ashl…
The walkthrough method
Software applications (apps) are now prevalent in the digital media environment. They are the site of significant sociocultural and economic transformations across many domains, from health and relationships to entertainment and everyday finance. As relatively closed technical systems, apps pose new methodological challenges for sociocultural digital media research. This article describes a method, grounded in a combination of science and technol…
Making Digital Cultures of Gender and Sexuality With Social Media
This article introduces a special issue concerning the interweaving of gender, sexuality, and social media. There are 10 articles included in the issue which together map out a landscape of diverse areas of interest covering topics such as sexism and harassment, health and wellbeing, relationships, and leisure
Is there an app for that? A case study of the potentials and limitations of the participatory turn and networked publics for classical music audience engagement
The participatory turn, fuelled by discourses and rhetoric regarding social media, and in the aftermath of the dot.com crash of the early 2000s, enrols to some extent an idea of being able to deploy networks to achieve institutional aims. The arts and cultural sector in the UK, in the face of funding cuts, has been keen to engage with such ideas in order to demonstrate value for money; by improving the efficiency of their operations, improving th…
Disconnecting with Social Networking Sites
Ben Light puts forward an alternative way of thinking about how we engage with social networking sites. He analyses our engagements social networking sites in public, at work, in our personal lives an
Strategies for the suspension and prevention of connection
This article attends to the idea of disconnection as a way of theorising people’s lived experience of social networking sites. Enrolling and extending a disconnective practice lens, we suggest that the disconnective strategies of suspension and prevention are operational necessities for those we might see as the users and owners of sites such as Facebook. Indeed, our work demonstrates that disconnection in these contexts need not be associated on…
An Orchestral Audience
This paper considers the key findings of a year-long collaborative research project focusing on the audience of the London Symphony Orchestra and their introduction of a new mobile telephone ('app') ticketing system. A mixed-method approach was employed, utilizing focus groups and questionnaires with over 80 participants, to research a sample group of university students. This research develops our understanding of classical music audiences, and …
Online Gaming in Context
There is little question of the social, cultural and economic importance of video games in the world today, with gaming now rivalling the movie and music sectors as a major leisure industry and pastime. The significance of video games within our everyday lives has certainly been increased and shaped by new technologies and gaming patterns, including the rise of home-based games consoles, advances in mobile telephone technology, the rise in more '…
Networked Masculinities and Social Networking Sites
It is of course recognised that technology is gendered and is implicated in gender relations. However, it continues to be the case that men’s experiences with technology are underexplored and the situation is even more problematic where digital media is concerned. Over the past 30 years we have witnessed a dramatic rise in the pervasiveness of digital media across many parts of the world and as associated with wide ranging aspects of our lives. T…
Connect and create’
Dominant discourses around young people and social networking in the mass media are littered with negative connotations and moral panics. While some scholars challenge this negativity, their focus has predominantly been upon the formation of friendships, the construction of identity and the presentation of the self online. We argue that as well as engaging in such areas, young people are also appropriating social networking sites, such as YouTube…
Integration in ERP environments
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) packages are said to enable integration when the standard inscription is adhered to through software configuration. A social shaping perspective expands conceptualisations of ERP packages, enabling a view of them as configurational technologies. Thus, ERP integration is opened up and the ‘integration through standardisation thesis’ is challenged
The walkthrough method
Software applications (apps) are now prevalent in the digital media environment. They are the site of significant sociocultural and economic transformations across many domains, from health and relationships to entertainment and everyday finance. As relatively closed technical systems, apps pose new methodological challenges for sociocultural digital media research. This article describes a method, grounded in a combination of science and technol…
Strategies for the suspension and prevention of connection
This article attends to the idea of disconnection as a way of theorising people’s lived experience of social networking sites. Enrolling and extending a disconnective practice lens, we suggest that the disconnective strategies of suspension and prevention are operational necessities for those we might see as the users and owners of sites such as Facebook. Indeed, our work demonstrates that disconnection in these contexts need not be associated on…
Data cultures of mobile dating and hook-up apps
The ethical and social implications of data mining, algorithmic curation and automation in the context of social media have been of heightened concern for a range of researchers with interests in digital media in recent years, with particular concerns about privacy arising in the context of mobile and locative media. Despite their wide adoption and economic importance, mobile dating apps have received little scholarly attention from this perspect…
Networked Masculinities and Social Networking Sites
It is of course recognised that technology is gendered and is implicated in gender relations. However, it continues to be the case that men’s experiences with technology are underexplored and the situation is even more problematic where digital media is concerned. Over the past 30 years we have witnessed a dramatic rise in the pervasiveness of digital media across many parts of the world and as associated with wide ranging aspects of our lives. T…
The Dick Pic
The combined rise of digital photography and social media has expanded what might be considered photo worthy. Among the pouting selfies and food stuffs of the day exists the ubiquitous dick pic. The mainstream media generally focuses on dick pics of the unsolicited kind, which, negatively positioned, are commonly associated with heterosexual harassment. Considering the ubiquity of dick pics across apps and platforms, research on the topic neverth…
Locked down apps versus the social media ecology
This article reports on focus groups exploring the best way to reach young men with vulgar comedy videos that provide sexual health information. Young people reported that they found the means by which the material was presented – as a locked down app – to be problematic, and that it would better be delivered through social media platforms such as YouTube. This would make it more ‘spreadable’. By contrast, adult sex education stakeholders thought…
Making Digital Cultures of Gender and Sexuality With Social Media
This article introduces a special issue concerning the interweaving of gender, sexuality, and social media. There are 10 articles included in the issue which together map out a landscape of diverse areas of interest covering topics such as sexism and harassment, health and wellbeing, relationships, and leisure
Connect and create’
Dominant discourses around young people and social networking in the mass media are littered with negative connotations and moral panics. While some scholars challenge this negativity, their focus has predominantly been upon the formation of friendships, the construction of identity and the presentation of the self online. We argue that as well as engaging in such areas, young people are also appropriating social networking sites, such as YouTube…
Integration in ERP environments
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) packages are said to enable integration when the standard inscription is adhered to through software configuration. A social shaping perspective expands conceptualisations of ERP packages, enabling a view of them as configurational technologies. Thus, ERP integration is opened up and the ‘integration through standardisation thesis’ is challenged
An Orchestral Audience
This paper considers the key findings of a year-long collaborative research project focusing on the audience of the London Symphony Orchestra and their introduction of a new mobile telephone ('app') ticketing system. A mixed-method approach was employed, utilizing focus groups and questionnaires with over 80 participants, to research a sample group of university students. This research develops our understanding of classical music audiences, and …
Sex education against the algorithm
Deplatforming of sexual content has increased across social media, usually operationalized by commercially charged, and algorithmically enforced, platform policies. This paper extends work on the algorithmic deplatforming of sex through the case study of how sex education content, or ‘sex edutainment’ on YouTube, is impacted by the platform’s algorithmic structures. Enrolling actor-network theory, we demonstrate the delegation work YouTube enacts…
Big Data, Method and the Ethics of Location
With the rise of geo-social media, location is emerging as a particularly sensitive data point for big data and digital media research. To explore this area, we reflect on our ethics for a study in which we analyze data generated via an app that facilitates public sex among men who have sex with men. The ethical sensitivities around location are further heightened in the context of research into such digital sexual cultures. Public sexual culture…
Integration in ERP environments
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) packages are said to enable integration when the standard inscription is adhered to through software configuration. A social shaping perspective expands conceptualisations of ERP packages, enabling a view of them as configurational technologies. Thus, ERP integration is opened up and the ‘integration through standardisation thesis’ is challenged
Connect and create’
Dominant discourses around young people and social networking in the mass media are littered with negative connotations and moral panics. While some scholars challenge this negativity, their focus has predominantly been upon the formation of friendships, the construction of identity and the presentation of the self online. We argue that as well as engaging in such areas, young people are also appropriating social networking sites, such as YouTube…
Online Gaming in Context
There is little question of the social, cultural and economic importance of video games in the world today, with gaming now rivalling the movie and music sectors as a major leisure industry and pastime. The significance of video games within our everyday lives has certainly been increased and shaped by new technologies and gaming patterns, including the rise of home-based games consoles, advances in mobile telephone technology, the rise in more '…
Networked Masculinities and Social Networking Sites
It is of course recognised that technology is gendered and is implicated in gender relations. However, it continues to be the case that men’s experiences with technology are underexplored and the situation is even more problematic where digital media is concerned. Over the past 30 years we have witnessed a dramatic rise in the pervasiveness of digital media across many parts of the world and as associated with wide ranging aspects of our lives. T…
Is there an app for that? A case study of the potentials and limitations of the participatory turn and networked publics for classical music audience engagement
The participatory turn, fuelled by discourses and rhetoric regarding social media, and in the aftermath of the dot.com crash of the early 2000s, enrols to some extent an idea of being able to deploy networks to achieve institutional aims. The arts and cultural sector in the UK, in the face of funding cuts, has been keen to engage with such ideas in order to demonstrate value for money; by improving the efficiency of their operations, improving th…
Disconnecting with Social Networking Sites
Ben Light puts forward an alternative way of thinking about how we engage with social networking sites. He analyses our engagements social networking sites in public, at work, in our personal lives an
Strategies for the suspension and prevention of connection
This article attends to the idea of disconnection as a way of theorising people’s lived experience of social networking sites. Enrolling and extending a disconnective practice lens, we suggest that the disconnective strategies of suspension and prevention are operational necessities for those we might see as the users and owners of sites such as Facebook. Indeed, our work demonstrates that disconnection in these contexts need not be associated on…
An Orchestral Audience
This paper considers the key findings of a year-long collaborative research project focusing on the audience of the London Symphony Orchestra and their introduction of a new mobile telephone ('app') ticketing system. A mixed-method approach was employed, utilizing focus groups and questionnaires with over 80 participants, to research a sample group of university students. This research develops our understanding of classical music audiences, and …
Imagining the Internet
This is the ninth time a special issue of Information, Communication & Society has featured some of the most exciting scholarship emerging from the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR). The p
The rise of speculative devices
I attend to two areas of increasing significance in relation to Web 2.0 since its announcement in 2005. The first is a focus on the non-human in digital media research, and the second is the normalisation of dating apps in society. Building upon ideas from speculative design and speculative method, I introduce the idea of speculative devices, those things that are set in place based on a conjecture of an outcome. Drawing upon a case study of Ashl…
The walkthrough method
Software applications (apps) are now prevalent in the digital media environment. They are the site of significant sociocultural and economic transformations across many domains, from health and relationships to entertainment and everyday finance. As relatively closed technical systems, apps pose new methodological challenges for sociocultural digital media research. This article describes a method, grounded in a combination of science and technol…
Making Digital Cultures of Gender and Sexuality With Social Media
This article introduces a special issue concerning the interweaving of gender, sexuality, and social media. There are 10 articles included in the issue which together map out a landscape of diverse areas of interest covering topics such as sexism and harassment, health and wellbeing, relationships, and leisure
Data cultures of mobile dating and hook-up apps
The ethical and social implications of data mining, algorithmic curation and automation in the context of social media have been of heightened concern for a range of researchers with interests in digital media in recent years, with particular concerns about privacy arising in the context of mobile and locative media. Despite their wide adoption and economic importance, mobile dating apps have received little scholarly attention from this perspect…
Locked down apps versus the social media ecology
This article reports on focus groups exploring the best way to reach young men with vulgar comedy videos that provide sexual health information. Young people reported that they found the means by which the material was presented – as a locked down app – to be problematic, and that it would better be delivered through social media platforms such as YouTube. This would make it more ‘spreadable’. By contrast, adult sex education stakeholders thought…
Big Data, Method and the Ethics of Location
With the rise of geo-social media, location is emerging as a particularly sensitive data point for big data and digital media research. To explore this area, we reflect on our ethics for a study in which we analyze data generated via an app that facilitates public sex among men who have sex with men. The ethical sensitivities around location are further heightened in the context of research into such digital sexual cultures. Public sexual culture…
The Dick Pic
The combined rise of digital photography and social media has expanded what might be considered photo worthy. Among the pouting selfies and food stuffs of the day exists the ubiquitous dick pic. The mainstream media generally focuses on dick pics of the unsolicited kind, which, negatively positioned, are commonly associated with heterosexual harassment. Considering the ubiquity of dick pics across apps and platforms, research on the topic neverth…
Puritanisme sexuel et capitalisme numérique
Trois chercheur-es spécialistes des médias numériques signent ensemble aux presses du Massachusetts Institute of Technology un ouvrage consacré à la régulation de la sexualité sur les réseaux socio-numériques : NSFW. Sex, Humor, and Risk in Social Media [Paasonen, Jarrett et Light, 2019]. Susanna Paasonen, professeure à l’Université de Turku (Finlande), est connue pour son travail sur les pornographies numériques, dont elle explore les dimensions…
Sex education against the algorithm
Deplatforming of sexual content has increased across social media, usually operationalized by commercially charged, and algorithmically enforced, platform policies. This paper extends work on the algorithmic deplatforming of sex through the case study of how sex education content, or ‘sex edutainment’ on YouTube, is impacted by the platform’s algorithmic structures. Enrolling actor-network theory, we demonstrate the delegation work YouTube enacts…
YouTube sex edutainment
There has been mixed academic reception to classroom-based peer education pedagogy for sexual health, with criticism of limitations and logistical challenges of the method. However, as the sexuality education landscape grows to include social media interventions, this may create alternative opportunities for the future use of peer education. In this paper, we interrogate YouTube Sex Edutainment, where influencers create educational videos using e…
Computer Science (16 obras) · Sociology (16 obras) · Gender, Feminism, and Media (10 obras) · World Wide Web (9 obras) · Internet privacy (8 obras) · Social media (8 obras) · Impact of Technology on Adolescents (7 obras) · Media studies (7 obras) · Political science (7 obras) · Psychology (6 obras)