My Books

connecting students working on social media at uib

In lots of different departments at the University of Bergen there are students writing bachelors and masters theses about social media and digital culture – and they’re often quite lonely, not aware of each other, and often don’t have much support from […]

book presentation today

I’m presenting my book Blogging at our university bookshop, Studia, today at 2:15 pm. If you’re in town you’re very welcome to come! I’m going to talk for 25 minutes and Studia’s serving snacks of some kind, so I think it’ll be […]

the value of a mother who loves technology

Today is Ada Lovelace day, and along with thousands of others, I’ve pledged to write about a woman in technology who has inspired me. I was going to write about Grace Hopper, who was the lead developer of COBOL, the first “human […]

knitters on twitter

I thought knitting was an example of a visual kind of social media topic – knitting blogs generally have photos in every single post – and so knitters wouldn’t bother with text-and-link-centric Twitter. I was wrong.

joining a facebook group as political action

I’ve joined numerous Facebook groups to protest against or campaign for causes, and I’ve noticed the mainstream media using the number of people who’ve joined such groups as evidence of popular pressure on the powers that be – whether it’s to preserve […]

“quality assured”

I wrote a few weeks ago about Store norske leksikon (SNL), the well-established Norwegian paper encyclopedia that’s gone digital with a mixture of Wikipedia-style user-generated content and experts for different topics who put the “quality assured” stamp on certain, specially-vetted articles. Now […]

blogging from the rainbow warrior

Greenpeace’s ship the Rainbow Warrior 2 was in Bergen yesterday, and we went on down to have a look. The very friendly crew showed groups around the ship, explaining how the navigation system worked, how they’d had sails put on the ship […]

celebrities on twitter and youtube and qik

It’s not that Demi Moore’s my favourite actress – but since I was fourteen or fifteen, she’s been one of those Hollywood icons that that in sum have defined beautiful for me. I don’t read gossip magazines except in waiting rooms or […]

“raymond carver on acid” says my book is “not bad”!

I guess I got lazy about egosurfing, because I only just noticed that my book has two reviews on Amazon, and both are horrible. My average “grade” is 2 1/2 stars, and the review currently at the top of the page starts […]

freedom of speech online: amnesty’s campaign

Amnesty Norway is campaigning for activists who’ve been imprisoned and tortured for what they’ve written on the internet. I’m all for their campaign, but as a scholar of social media I’m particularly impressed with how well Amnesty is working to encourage supporters […]