Steven McDermottBA (Queens, Belfast) MA (Warwick), MRes (Aberdeen)Position: Doctoral Candidate, Teaching Assistant Email: S.E.McDermott@leeds.ac.ukLocation: Postgraduate Research Room, Houldsworth Building, Level 3 Tel: 01133434567 Office hours: Thursday 2-3 by appointment only | |
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BIO He has a B.A. (Hons.) in Philosophy and Sociology from The Queen's University of Belfast, an M.A. in Philosophy and Social Theory from the University of Warwick and a Master of Research in Social Research from the University of Aberdeen. His research explores the socio-political dimensions of the Internet and other technologies, using Social Network Analysis, Semantic Network Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis. He was awarded a Research Student Scholarship in 2008 and is currently the Research Assistant My Website with available papers and current activities What Genre of Discipline is the Singapore Blogosphere? This research questions the assertion that the Internet is a force for democratisation in authoritarian regimes (Habermas, 2006), and at the same time another means for disseminating propaganda, fear and intimidation (Rodan, 1998). This paper analyses the discourses and styles of discourse of the Singapore blogosphere. Using data gathered in 2009 to illustrate the methods and measurements used. I extracted a corpus from blog posts (24megabytes). Hurst (2006) and Lin and Sundaram et al. (2007) claim that the Singapore blogosphere is isolated from the global blogosphere and clearly demarcated. I have targeted blogs using social network analysis uncovering the key players of the Singapore blogs with higher levels of ‘betweenness centrality' (de Nooy & Mrvar et al., 2005). These examples will help highlight the analytic framework, benefits and limitations of using social network analysis and an anthropological approach to networks. My analysis of the Singaporean blogosphere in 2009 provides an exploratory analysis of the argument that the non-democratic nature of Singapore society shapes the development of online public spheres. This research questions whether the Internet engenders democracy or the dissemination of propaganda, fear, and intimidation. Charting the evolving relationship between the Singaporean state and an online network of bloggers, I tentatively conclude that the Singapore blogosphere acts as a means of reinforcing the discourse of ‘communitarianism' (Chua, 1997).
SUPERVISORS Dr. A.E. Cavanagh Dr Stephen Lax
PUBLICATIONS AND PAPERS with Papadopoulos, L., (2010) ‘The Papadopoulos Report on the Sexualisation of Young People', Report commissioned by the Home Office, Violent Crimes Unit of the UK. (2008) ‘Arbitrarily Combining the Social Network Approach with the Ethnographic Approach’, Paper presented at the Communication Networks on the Web Conference, Dec 2008, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, sponsored by the European Science Foundation. (2008) ‘A Hyperlink Analysis of the UK Porn Industry’, Paper presented at the Globalisation, Media and Adult/Sexual Content: Challenges to Regulation and Research Conference, Athens, 2008.
(2008) ‘The Singapore Blogosphere: What form of Habermasian Public Sphere?, Paper presented as the Politics: Web 2.0: An International Conference, April 2008, Royal Holloway, University of London, April 17-18, 2008. (2007) 'Singapore Blogosphere and Political Participation: An Ethnographic Approach', Conference Proceedings of ICS PhD Conference "Communication Technologies of Empowerment", Institute of Communications Studies, May 2007, Leeds, UK. BOOK REVIEWS Price, S., (2009) Discourse Power Address: The Politics of Public Communication. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing for Sociology 43(6), Sage Publications. Julio Faundez, (editor) (2007) 'On the State of Democracy', Routledge, for the International Journal for Radical Mass Media Criticism. WORKSHOPS/TRAINING MediaFest 2009, The Sexualisation Of Culture? (mp3, 27Mb) In this session during MediaFest 2009 in Bradford, speakers go behind the headlines to explore whether and in what ways women are sexualised in the media with a panel of experts and interested parties, including an educationalist, an activist, a psychologist and an external independent reviewer of a report that will be submitted to the Home Office. LiveSociology 2007, on using new media in social research Jan 2007 - Dec 2007. Third Annual Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem: Aggregation, Analysis and Dynamics. 23rd - 26th May 2006 WWW2006 International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2) Edinburgh. Knowledge of Software Packages While attaining my qualifications I acquired knowledge of; Pajek, Netdraw, Java, HTML, FirstPage, Adobe GoLive, PageBuilder, PowerPoint, Microsoft Windows, SPSS (a statistical analysis package)and Nvivo. MEMBERSHIP OF PROFESSIONAL ORGANISATIONS International Association for Media and Communication Research British Sociological Association International Communications Association TEACHING EXPERIENCE 2009 - Teaching Assistant Communications Sciences and Technologies COMM2140 (outline) with Dr Stephen Lax 2008 - Teaching Assistant Communications Arts COMM2120 (outline) with ICS with Dr Bethany Klein 2003 - 2004 in Singapore Senior Lecturer Introduction to Sociology, Sociological Theory and Research Methods and Methodology 2003 - 2004 Lecturer Research Methods and Methodology 2001 - 2002 Lecturer Introduction to Sociology
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Institute of Communication Studies - Faculty of Performance, Visual Arts and Communications
