Grant Blank
Biographic Data
| ID | 253612 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Grant Blank |
| GIVEN NAMES | Grant |
| FAMILY NAME | Blank |
| SIGNATURE | BLANK G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6821-0958 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 161 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The limits of platforms: Why disintermediation has failed in the art market
Platforms have disintermediated the markets for books, film, television, and music, but the online art market has reproduced offline structures, leaving intermediaries intact. This study explores the limits of platforms by describing why disintermediation failed in the art market. Along with museums and other intermediaries, the most important function of galleries is to co-create artistic value. They not only sell art but also form a central par…
Using AI to model future societal instability
This paper develops a model that aims to pinpoint the future structural constraints facing a number of countries and the instability that may result from these constraints. The model uses existing datasets and extrapolates major patterns several decades into the future based on past patterns. Contrary to predictions of looming crisis in certain states by Turchin and others, the argument is that a more likely scenario is an increasing inability to…
‘There are some things that I would never ask Alexa’ – privacy work, contextual integrity, and smart speaker assistants
When new technologies like smart speaker assistants (SSAs) enter private spaces, new threats to privacy emerge. Drawing on the concepts of privacy work [Nippert-Eng, C. E. (2010). Islands of privacy. University of Chicago Press.] and contextual integrity [Nissenbaum, H. F. (2010). Privacy in context: Technology, policy, and the integrity of social life. Stanford Law Books.], this study uses qualitative interviews to explore two questions about SS…
Does the type of privacy-protective behaviour matter? An analysis of online privacy protective action and motivation
Individual decisions to protect privacy online are complex. Most research has treated privacy protection measures as a single, unitary category. This paper challenges this notion by looking at multiple categories of privacy protection behaviour. Our data are from the Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS) as well as insights from the semi-structured interviews. We find two types of privacy protective actions, which we call security actions and preventive …
The value of privacy is not as high as finding my person” — Privacy risks as abstractions
Online dating has emerged as a key platform for digital engagement among young people, serving as a common medium for building relationships. As multimedia platforms, dating apps encourage users to translate their notions of identity construction, self-expression, and communication into engagement and participation in the digital world. Dating apps are one of several technologies that are changing existing norms of relationship building, self-pre…
Digital inequalities and public health during Covid-19: Media dependency and vaccination
During the COVID-19 pandemic information about the transmission of the virus came out slowly and recommended practices changed over time. This made communication media, like the Internet, especially important. Few prior studies have considered how digital inequalities influence information flows. Building on three research streams – vaccine hesitancy, information-seeking, and digital inequalities – we examine how digital inequalities, health medi…
Rethinking digital skills in the era of compulsory computing: Methods, measurement, policy and theory
Around the world, digital platforms have become the first – or only – option for many everyday activities. The United Kingdom, for instance, is implementing a 'digital-by-default' e-government agenda, which has steadily digitized vital services such as taxes, pensions, and welfare. This pervasive digitization marks an important shift in the relationship between society and computing; people are compelled to use computers and the internet in order…
Externalized domestication: Smart speaker assistants, networks and domestication theory
Framed by domestication theory, affordances and use genres, this study explores early adopters’ uses of smart speaker assistants (SSAs), like Amazon Echo (Alexa) and Google Home. Based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews, we develop a typology of use genres, and describe spatially distributed uses. The interviews revealed six use genres that go beyond the well-known convenience and entertainment. Specifically, the use genres of companionship,…
The winners and the losers of the platform economy: Who participates
The platform economy is rapidly transforming the dynamics of the labor market. Optimists argue platform work functions as a social equalizer, opening opportunities for additional earnings for those who need it most. Pessimists suggest that the platform economy widens earning disparities by providing additional income to people who already have good jobs. We contribute to this debate by examining who participates in the platform economy and their …
Social Media, Web, and Panel Surveys: Using Non‐Probability Samples in Social and Policy Research
The use of online surveys has grown rapidly in social science and policy research, surpassing more established methods. We argue that a better understanding is needed, especially of the strengths and weaknesses of non‐probability online surveys, which can be conducted relatively quickly and cheaply. We describe two common approaches to non‐probability online surveys—river and panel sampling—and theorize their inherent selection biases: namely, to…
Digital inequalities 3.0: Emergent inequalities in the information age
Marking the 25th anniversary of the “digital divide,” we continue our metaphor of the digital inequality stack by mapping out the rapidly evolving nature of digital inequality using a broad lens. We tackle complex, and often unseen, inequalities spawned by the platform economy, automation, big data, algorithms, cybercrime, cybersafety, gaming, emotional well-being, assistive technologies, civic engagement, and mobility. These inequalities are wov…
Digital inequalities 2.0: Legacy inequalities in the information age
2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the “digital divide.” Although a quarter century has passed, legacy digital inequalities continue, and emergent digital inequalities are proliferating. Many of the initial schisms identified in 1995 are still relevant today. Twenty-five years later, foundational access inequalities continue to separate the digital haves and the digital have-nots within and across countries. In addition, even ubiquitous-access po…
The echo chamber is overstated: The moderating effect of political interest and diverse media
In a high-choice media environment, there are fears that individuals will select media and content that reinforce their existing beliefs and lead to segregation based on interest and/or partisanship. This could lead to partisan echo chambers among those who are politically interested and could contribute to a growing gap in knowledge between those who are politically interested and those who are not. However, the high-choice environment also allo…
Digital traces of distinction? Popular orientation and user-engagement with status hierarchies in TripAdvisor reviews of cultural organizations
Cultural organizations are categorized by cultural products (high or popular culture) and by organizational form (nonprofit or commercial). In sociology, these classifications are understood predominantly through a Bourdieusian lens, which links cultural consumption to habitus and a class-based struggle for distinction. However, people’s engagement with institutionalized cultural classifications may be expressed differently on the Internet, where…
Consumption, Food and Cultural
Everybody eats to live but food is more than nutrition. Food is a powerful carrier of cultural meaning. Food touches many core issues in sociology and social life, like social stratification, poverty, and prestige, class, gender roles, consumption, nationalism, and globalization. These cross‐pressures generate rich collections of meaning. Local meanings as they are modified by culture, institutional context, class, politics, and history make food…
Local Geographies of Digital Inequality
Combining data from a sample survey, the 2013 Oxford Internet Survey, with the 2011 UK Census, we employ small area estimation to estimate Internet use in small geographies in Britain. This is the first attempt to estimate Internet use at any small-scale level. Doing so allows us to understand the local geographies of British Internet use, showing that the area with least use is in the North East, followed by central Wales. The highest Internet u…
Representativeness of Social Media in Great Britain: Investigating Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and Instagram
Sociological studies show that Internet access, skills, uses, and outcomes vary between different population segments. However, we lack differentiated statistical evidence of the social characteristics of users of distinct social media platforms. We address this issue using a representative survey of Great Britain and investigate the social characteristics of six major social media platforms. We find that age and socioeconomic status are driving …
Benefits and harms from Internet use: A differentiated analysis of Great Britain
Recent studies have enhanced our understanding of digital divides by investigating outcomes of Internet use. We extend this research to analyse positive and negative outcomes of Internet use in the United Kingdom. We apply structural equation modelling to data from a large Internet survey to compare the social structuration of Internet benefits with harms. We find that highly educated users benefit most from using the web. Elderly individuals ben…
The Digital Divide Among Twitter Users and Its Implications for Social Research
Hundreds of papers have been published using Twitter data, but few previous papers report the digital divide among Twitter users. British Twitter users are younger, wealthier, and better educated than other Internet users, who in turn are younger, wealthier, and better educated than the off-line British population. American Twitter users are also younger and wealthier than the rest of the population, but they are not better educated. Twitter user…
Dimensions of Internet use: Amount, variety, and types
We examine the dimensions of Internet use based on a representative sample of the population of the UK, making three important contributions. First, we clarify theoretical dimensions of Internet use that have been conflated in prior work. We argue that the property space of Internet use has three main dimensions: amount of use, variety of different uses, and types of use. Second, the Oxford Internet Survey 2011 data set contains a comprehensive s…
Comment Social Stratification and Content Production: A response
My paper (Blank 2013) makes two fundamental points about content production and inequality. First, content production can be meaningfully grouped into several discrete types. Using British data fro
Who Creates Content: Stratification and content creation on the Internet
Until the Internet arrived, content creation and distribution was always an expensive, difficult process. With the Internet it is dramatically easier, faster, and cheaper. Some argue that this will move creation out of the hands of elites and lead to wider participation in the public sphere and to enhanced democracy. This paper makes three contributions to this debate. First, it uses a national random sample of the British population. This is muc…
The Participatory Web: A user perspective on Web 2.0
This paper makes three contributions: first, we suggest a clear, concise definition of Web 2.0, something that has eluded other authors, including the Tim O'Reilly the originator of the concept. Second, prior work has focused largely on the implications of Web 2.0 for producers of content, usually corporations or government agencies. This paper is one of the few analyses of Web 2.0 from the point of view of users. Third, we characterize the creat…
Age and Trust in the Internet: The Centrality of Experience and Attitudes Toward Technology in Britain
The authors describe changes in user’s trust on the Internet in Britain between 2003 and 2009, and show how the relationship between age and trust can be explained by a combination of experience with the Internet and general attitudes toward technology. The comparison uses 2003 results reported by Dutton and Shepherd (2006) versus similarly sampled 2009 data. The authors examine two sets of dependent variables—perceptions of trust and risk on the…
Country Roads” to Globalization: Sociological Models for Understanding American Popular Music in China
The Digital Divide Among Twitter Users and Its Implications for Social Research
Hundreds of papers have been published using Twitter data, but few previous papers report the digital divide among Twitter users. British Twitter users are younger, wealthier, and better educated than other Internet users, who in turn are younger, wealthier, and better educated than the off-line British population. American Twitter users are also younger and wealthier than the rest of the population, but they are not better educated. Twitter user…
Benefits and harms from Internet use: A differentiated analysis of Great Britain
Recent studies have enhanced our understanding of digital divides by investigating outcomes of Internet use. We extend this research to analyse positive and negative outcomes of Internet use in the United Kingdom. We apply structural equation modelling to data from a large Internet survey to compare the social structuration of Internet benefits with harms. We find that highly educated users benefit most from using the web. Elderly individuals ben…
Representativeness of Social Media in Great Britain: Investigating Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and Instagram
Sociological studies show that Internet access, skills, uses, and outcomes vary between different population segments. However, we lack differentiated statistical evidence of the social characteristics of users of distinct social media platforms. We address this issue using a representative survey of Great Britain and investigate the social characteristics of six major social media platforms. We find that age and socioeconomic status are driving …
Age and Trust in the Internet: The Centrality of Experience and Attitudes Toward Technology in Britain
The authors describe changes in user’s trust on the Internet in Britain between 2003 and 2009, and show how the relationship between age and trust can be explained by a combination of experience with the Internet and general attitudes toward technology. The comparison uses 2003 results reported by Dutton and Shepherd (2006) versus similarly sampled 2009 data. The authors examine two sets of dependent variables—perceptions of trust and risk on the…
Teaching Qualitative Data Analysis to Graduate Students
This article reports the author’s experience teaching sociology graduate students howto analyze qualitative data. The course focused on teaching practical skills of defining coding categories, coding text, analyzing coded text, and writing up the results of analysis. The assignments used Qualrus software to give students hands-on practice doing all of these. The course was enthusiastically received and will become a permanent part of the sociolog…
Local Geographies of Digital Inequality
Combining data from a sample survey, the 2013 Oxford Internet Survey, with the 2011 UK Census, we employ small area estimation to estimate Internet use in small geographies in Britain. This is the first attempt to estimate Internet use at any small-scale level. Doing so allows us to understand the local geographies of British Internet use, showing that the area with least use is in the North East, followed by central Wales. The highest Internet u…
Digital traces of distinction? Popular orientation and user-engagement with status hierarchies in TripAdvisor reviews of cultural organizations
Cultural organizations are categorized by cultural products (high or popular culture) and by organizational form (nonprofit or commercial). In sociology, these classifications are understood predominantly through a Bourdieusian lens, which links cultural consumption to habitus and a class-based struggle for distinction. However, people’s engagement with institutionalized cultural classifications may be expressed differently on the Internet, where…
The Data Documentation Initiative: The Value and Significance of a Worldwide Standard
Effective secondary analysis of social science data requires good documentation. Especially because Internet access has become standard, the problems of reading and understanding the contents of data files have become acute. Resolving these problems requires standards for documenting data, as well as standard formats for both data and documentation that can be read and displayed by computers and software anywhere in the world. To define a documen…
Why Sociological Computing Gets No Respect
Sociology has not paid much attention to scholars working on new computer-related applications. A central reason is that sociologists doing computer applications have been content to work in peripheral areas and have not focused on applying new computer technology to central problems of the discipline. Particularly little attention has been paid to the development of "killer apps," compelling applications of computer technology that open new area…
Country Roads” to Globalization: Sociological Models for Understanding American Popular Music in China
New Technology in Sociology: Practical Applications in Research and Work
When technology has been applied in business environments, its justification has usually been cast in terms of saving time or saving money. In the social sciences, the justification must be different; the viability of sociology as a profession, for example, will not be enhanced by cost reductions. The focus in this volume is on a different bottom line: the quality and content of work
The data documentation initiative: A preservation standard for research
Communication and Information Technologies: A History of the Middle Years
The American Sociological Association section on Sociology and Computing, as it was named from 1995 to 2002, faced repeated challenges during the decade of the 1990s. This article traces changes in the sociological audiences concerned with computing during that decade and discusses how they influenced the way the section coped with the routinization of computer use in sociology, the rise of MicrosoftWindows, the increasing use of computers in tea…
The Road Ahead: Observations on the Role of the Internet
By simplifying communication, the Internet is causing significant, broad changes. This article describes some effects of the Internet on teaching and research: the use of Web pages in teaching, spread of remote statistical analysis, eliminating journal page constraints, and the impact on activities that benefit from debate and discussion. It describes how congestion on the Internet fosters change in pricing and priorities. The article ends by poi…
Introduction to the special issue: New technology and the nature of sociological work
Hamlet , Shelley, and the Air-Eating Chameleon
(1989). Hamlet, Shelley, and the Air-Eating Chameleon. ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 48-50
What Can We Learn about Modeling Social Systems
New Technology in Sociology: Practical Applications in Research and Work
When technology has been applied in business environments, its justification has usually been cast in terms of saving time or saving money. In the social sciences, the justification must be different; the viability of sociology as a profession, for example, will not be enhanced by cost reductions. The focus in this volume is on a different bottom line: the quality and content of work
Why Sociological Computing Gets No Respect
Sociology has not paid much attention to scholars working on new computer-related applications. A central reason is that sociologists doing computer applications have been content to work in peripheral areas and have not focused on applying new computer technology to central problems of the discipline. Particularly little attention has been paid to the development of "killer apps," compelling applications of computer technology that open new area…
The Road Ahead: Observations on the Role of the Internet
By simplifying communication, the Internet is causing significant, broad changes. This article describes some effects of the Internet on teaching and research: the use of Web pages in teaching, spread of remote statistical analysis, eliminating journal page constraints, and the impact on activities that benefit from debate and discussion. It describes how congestion on the Internet fosters change in pricing and priorities. The article ends by poi…
The Data Documentation Initiative: The Value and Significance of a Worldwide Standard
Effective secondary analysis of social science data requires good documentation. Especially because Internet access has become standard, the problems of reading and understanding the contents of data files have become acute. Resolving these problems requires standards for documenting data, as well as standard formats for both data and documentation that can be read and displayed by computers and software anywhere in the world. To define a documen…
Teaching Qualitative Data Analysis to Graduate Students
This article reports the author’s experience teaching sociology graduate students howto analyze qualitative data. The course focused on teaching practical skills of defining coding categories, coding text, analyzing coded text, and writing up the results of analysis. The assignments used Qualrus software to give students hands-on practice doing all of these. The course was enthusiastically received and will become a permanent part of the sociolog…
Communication and Information Technologies: A History of the Middle Years
The American Sociological Association section on Sociology and Computing, as it was named from 1995 to 2002, faced repeated challenges during the decade of the 1990s. This article traces changes in the sociological audiences concerned with computing during that decade and discusses how they influenced the way the section coped with the routinization of computer use in sociology, the rise of MicrosoftWindows, the increasing use of computers in tea…
Consumption, Food and Cultural
Everybody eats to live, but food is more than nutrition. It is a basis for personal identity, a vehicle through which social structure influences individuals, an object that manifests long‐term cultural and social trends, and a foundation for social theory. Food is a powerful carrier of cultural meaning
The data documentation initiative: A preservation standard for research
The Sage Handbook of Online Research Methods
Online research methods are popular, dynamic and fast-changing. This edition offers both updates of existing subject areas and new chapters covering more recent developments, such as social media, big data, data visualization and CAQDAS. It covers online data capture and collection, online surveys, digital quantitative analysis, visual ethnography, and more.
The Sage handbook of online research methods
Country Roads” to Globalization: Sociological Models for Understanding American Popular Music in China
Age and Trust in the Internet: The Centrality of Experience and Attitudes Toward Technology in Britain
The authors describe changes in user’s trust on the Internet in Britain between 2003 and 2009, and show how the relationship between age and trust can be explained by a combination of experience with the Internet and general attitudes toward technology. The comparison uses 2003 results reported by Dutton and Shepherd (2006) versus similarly sampled 2009 data. The authors examine two sets of dependent variables—perceptions of trust and risk on the…
The Participatory Web: A user perspective on Web 2.0
This paper makes three contributions: first, we suggest a clear, concise definition of Web 2.0, something that has eluded other authors, including the Tim O'Reilly the originator of the concept. Second, prior work has focused largely on the implications of Web 2.0 for producers of content, usually corporations or government agencies. This paper is one of the few analyses of Web 2.0 from the point of view of users. Third, we characterize the creat…
Comment Social Stratification and Content Production: A response
My paper (Blank 2013) makes two fundamental points about content production and inequality. First, content production can be meaningfully grouped into several discrete types. Using British data fro
Who Creates Content: Stratification and content creation on the Internet
Until the Internet arrived, content creation and distribution was always an expensive, difficult process. With the Internet it is dramatically easier, faster, and cheaper. Some argue that this will move creation out of the hands of elites and lead to wider participation in the public sphere and to enhanced democracy. This paper makes three contributions to this debate. First, it uses a national random sample of the British population. This is muc…
Dimensions of Internet use: Amount, variety, and types
We examine the dimensions of Internet use based on a representative sample of the population of the UK, making three important contributions. First, we clarify theoretical dimensions of Internet use that have been conflated in prior work. We argue that the property space of Internet use has three main dimensions: amount of use, variety of different uses, and types of use. Second, the Oxford Internet Survey 2011 data set contains a comprehensive s…
Benefits and harms from Internet use: A differentiated analysis of Great Britain
Recent studies have enhanced our understanding of digital divides by investigating outcomes of Internet use. We extend this research to analyse positive and negative outcomes of Internet use in the United Kingdom. We apply structural equation modelling to data from a large Internet survey to compare the social structuration of Internet benefits with harms. We find that highly educated users benefit most from using the web. Elderly individuals ben…
The Digital Divide Among Twitter Users and Its Implications for Social Research
Hundreds of papers have been published using Twitter data, but few previous papers report the digital divide among Twitter users. British Twitter users are younger, wealthier, and better educated than other Internet users, who in turn are younger, wealthier, and better educated than the off-line British population. American Twitter users are also younger and wealthier than the rest of the population, but they are not better educated. Twitter user…
Consumption, Food and Cultural
Everybody eats to live but food is more than nutrition. Food is a powerful carrier of cultural meaning. Food touches many core issues in sociology and social life, like social stratification, poverty, and prestige, class, gender roles, consumption, nationalism, and globalization. These cross‐pressures generate rich collections of meaning. Local meanings as they are modified by culture, institutional context, class, politics, and history make food…
Local Geographies of Digital Inequality
Combining data from a sample survey, the 2013 Oxford Internet Survey, with the 2011 UK Census, we employ small area estimation to estimate Internet use in small geographies in Britain. This is the first attempt to estimate Internet use at any small-scale level. Doing so allows us to understand the local geographies of British Internet use, showing that the area with least use is in the North East, followed by central Wales. The highest Internet u…
Representativeness of Social Media in Great Britain: Investigating Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and Instagram
Sociological studies show that Internet access, skills, uses, and outcomes vary between different population segments. However, we lack differentiated statistical evidence of the social characteristics of users of distinct social media platforms. We address this issue using a representative survey of Great Britain and investigate the social characteristics of six major social media platforms. We find that age and socioeconomic status are driving …
The echo chamber is overstated: The moderating effect of political interest and diverse media
In a high-choice media environment, there are fears that individuals will select media and content that reinforce their existing beliefs and lead to segregation based on interest and/or partisanship. This could lead to partisan echo chambers among those who are politically interested and could contribute to a growing gap in knowledge between those who are politically interested and those who are not. However, the high-choice environment also allo…
Computer Science (33 works) · Sociology (24 works) · World Wide Web (17 works) · The Internet (15 works) · Social Media and Politics (14 works) · Political science (12 works) · Social science (12 works) · Internet privacy (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Business (9 works)