This is a selection of links to some of my pieces of journalism, reviews, magazine articles, extended website/blog posts and other short pieces.
Deconstructing Foucault, The Times Literary Supplement, 5 April 2024.
Spotify daylist: algorithms don’t just react to your music taste, they shape it, The Conversation, 5 February 2024.
Social media ennui, LSE Impact Blog, 27 October 2023.
Review of Grian Chatten’s album Chaos For The Fly, Louder Than War, 4 August 2023.
In the City: How Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin theorised the modern metropolis, The Times Literary Supplement, 28 April 2023.
AI will soon become impossible for humans to comprehend – the story of neural networks tells us why, long-read article for The Conversation, 31 March 2023. (This piece was co-published by the BBC, whose version is here)
Invisible Giants, The Times Literary Supplement, 17 February 2023.
Inescapable crisis: have our worn-out imaginations reached their limits?, The Critic, 19 December 2022.
How can we make sense of the Twitter soap opera?, Transforming Society, 2 December 2022.
Just Jessica – On Murder, She Wrote, Berfrois, 8 August 2022.
The Internet is only what you think it is, Berfrois, 20 April 2022.
Why you should be listening to The Bug Club, Louder Than War, 20 March 2022.
Review of And Away…An Autobiography by Bob Mortimer, Louder Than War, 4 January 2022.
Why can’t I stop listening to Fontaines D.C.?, Louder Than War, 7 December 2021.
Review of Discriminating Data, LSE Review of Books, 22 November 2021.
How Netflix affects what we watch and who we are – and it’s not just about the algorithm, The Conversation, 14 October 2021.
The Data Problem, Brave New Europe, 2 October 2021.
More and more and more culture, ISSUES, 23 August 2021.
As social media classify and rank our ‘memories’, what will this mean for the way we remember? (written with Ben Jacobsen), LSE Impact Blog, 23 July 2021.
DJ Shadow Endtroducing 25th anniversary retrospective, Louder Than War, 18 July 2021.
Review of Gruff Rhys’ album Seeking New Gods, Louder Than War, 28 May 2021.
Social media ‘likes’ change the way we feel about our memories, written with Ben Jacobsen, The Conversation, 15 April 2021.
Why don’t we just…watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window?, Big Issue North, 2 November 2020.
“Trapped in a code” – the fight over our algorithmic future, Open Democracy, 21 August 2020.
Music as a soundtrack to creative social research, Transforming Society, 3 July 2020.
Give us our toilets back, Big Issue North, 29 May 2020.
Can we really change the tech sector?, Open Democracy, 28 May 2020.
Sleaford Mods as Ready-Made art, Berfrois, 28 May 2020.
The case of bookcases, LSE Review of Books, 15 May 2020.
The curious philosophy of Amazon’s video doorbell shows the tech giants have already won the debate, Prospect, 27 April 2020.
The power of music in difficult times, Louder Than War, 13 April 2020.
Why I think Menswear were alright, Louder Than War, 11 April 2020.
Review of DJ Shadow’s Our Pathetic Age, Louder Than War, 5 April 2020.
When updates end, Social Science Space, 9 March 2020.
The end of hidden tracks?, Berfrois, 4 February 2020.
What Twitter’s response to Clearview tells us about facial recognition’s future, New Statesman, 3 February 2020.
As the decade comes to a close, what change has it brought for the way we listen to music?, Louder Than War, 31 December 2019.
Twitter is banning political ads – but what counts as ‘political’, The Independent, 31 October 2019.
Should we use AI to make us quicker and more efficient researchers?, LSE Impact, 30 October 2019.
A love of fakes, Berfrois, 28 October 2019.
We need to change who can analyse our data – as well as who own it, OpenDemocracy, 17 June 2019.
Facebook’s new currency is an attempt to create a platform we never leave, OpenDemocracy, 27 May 2019.
Uber and the power of imagined futures, The Social Review, 1 May 2019.
A machine-generated book and an algorithmic author, Towards Data Science, 14 April 2019.
Portraits of a pulsating life: Georg Simmel’s encounter with Rembrandt, Berfrois, 9 April 2019.
Are cassette tapes really making a comeback?, Louder Than War, 10 January 2019.
Review of the Beastie Boys Book, Louder Than War, 6 January 2019.
The oppressiveness of creativity, Open Democracy, 30 October 2018.
The new concentrations of power, Towards Data Science, 20 October 2018
Review of Digital Garbage, Louder Than War, 1 October 2018.
Data and political change, Towards Data Science, 20 September 2018.
Grasping at upheaval, Berfrois, 11 September 2018.
Those matter-out-of-place music TV moments, Louder Than War, 5 August 2018.
The inescapable gaze of data analytics, Discover Society, 3 July 2018
The data imaginary: Six reasons why data analytics have become so powerful, LSE Politics & Policy, 3 July 2018.
Is technology undermining democracy?, Brave New Europe, 29 April 2018.
Zuckerberg’s answer to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, give Facebook more power, The Independent, 11 April 2018.
The power of our social media data, Discover Society, 4th April 2018.
Cambridge Analytica: The data analytics industry is already in full swing, The Conversation, 23 March 2018.
Ripping up the Yellow Pages, Open Democracy, 14 September 2017.
Review of Radicals: Outsiders Changing the World, LSE Review of Books, 31 July 2017.
The backfire effect, bad objects and changing our mind online, Open Democracy, 19 July 2017.
The puzzle we face, New Socialist, 19 July 2017.
Dominance and Disruption, Open Democracy, 6 July 2017.
Why don’t we just…stop measuring ourselves all the time?, Big Issue North, 12-18 June.
The Hegemon Crack’d, New Socialist, 16 June 2017.
The cold intimacy that comes when the TV calls your name, Open Democracy, 2 June 2017.
The power of money: how the rich took hold of our monetary systems to make themselves richer, Open Democracy, 5 May 2017.
From Bananarama to Boyzone, Here’s why so many bands are making a comeback, The Conversation, 28 April 2017.
Data-led politics: Do analytics have the power that we are led to believe?, LSE Politics & Policy, 3 March 2017.
Whatever happened to 3 Alveston Place?, Louder Than War, 19 February 2017.
Stuart Hall: Selected Political Writings, Hong Kong Review of Books, 13 February 2017.
Why is everyone talking about algorithms?, Discover Society, 4 January 2017.
Algorithms: the villains and heroes of the ‘post-truth’ era, Open Democracy, 3 January 2017.
Measuring and engineering influence on social media: what does this mean for political power?, LSE Politics & Policy, 6 December 2016.
Four Futures, Open Democracy, 23 November 2016.
Walter Benjamin’s Tales, Berfrois, 9 November 2016.
The closure of Vine, The Conversation, 28 October 2016.
Numbers don’t need to be trusted to shape our lives: they just need our attention, The Guardian, 11 August 2016.
Snapchat’s new Memories function could change the way we remember, New Statesman, 13 July 2016.
The Carnival of Uncertainty, Open Democracy, 3 July 2016. (A longer version of this piece is available here).
How do we reimagine?, Sociological Review website, 3 July 2016.
Metrics and the production of uncertainty, LSE Politics & Policy, 24 May 2016.
In defence of writing book reviews, Times Higher Education, 7 April 2016.
Walter Benjamin’s Blog, Berfrois, 8 December 2015.
Being trained by Twitter stats, LSE Impact, 25 November 2015.
Mason’s Postcapitalism – are networks actually part of the problem?, Open Democracy, 11 November 2015.
When ‘special measures’ become ordinary, Open Democracy, 7 August 2015.
The Growing Power of the Data Analytics Industry, Discover Society, August 2015.
Taking a measure of happiness, Berfrois, 20 May 2015.
Systems of measurement have a productive power in our lives, LSE Politics & Policy, 28 April 2015.
Real or fantasy, football is now consumed by numbers, The Conversation, 28 April 2015.
Living with smartness, Open Democracy, 27 April 2015.
One hit wonders dominate as social media turns up the pace of the pop charts, The Conversation, 6 January 2015.
Walter Benjamin’s Voice, Berfrois, 18 December 2014.
Sociology’s dual horizons, The Sociological Review website, 20 October 2014.
The embedded power of algorithms, Open Democracy, 3 July 2014.
The invisibility of the recording engineer, Discover Society, 1 July 2014.
Collecting Simmel’s Thoughts: Fragmentation, Consistency, Unity, Berfrois, 21 November 2013.
The New Circulations of Culture, Berfrois, 31 July 2013.
Academic Knowledge and the Politics of Circulation, LSE Impact in the Social Sciences, 29 July 2013.
Algorithms in the Academy, Times Higher Education, 30 August 2012.
Experiencing Sociology’s Midlife Crisis, Sociological Imagination, 13 July 2012.
Bodies in Musical Bubbles, Berfrois, 11 July 2012.
Sloterdijk’s Moment, Berfrois, 29 May 2012.
The Chaos of Music Genres, Berfrois, 4 May 2012.
Popular Culture and the Unconstrained Sociological Imagination, Sociological Imagination, 8 December 2011.
Urban knowledge through popular culture: some reflections on everyday encounters with the melodramatic city, (scroll down to pages 67-70) Lo Squaderno: Exploration in Space and Society No. 19, 2011.
David Beer 