Dr Hugh Mackay
Research interests
My research is in the sociology of technology, and uses qualitative or ethnographic methods. I'm interested in the co-construction of technology and culture. There have been two strands to this work: one is how designers and users shape technology, which is something I've explored by examining how technological systems, mainly computer systems, are shaped. My particular contribution to this field is about how users shape technologies and, at the same time, are configured by designers. The other strand has focused on new media technologies. I'm interested in how multi-channel television and the digital environment are transforming contemporary culture. I was funded recently by a breadth of media organisations in Wales to examine uses of the mass media in ten very different households. Under the auspices of CRESC I am working on a project on the arrival of continuous broadband ('always-on' Internet) in the home. This involves interviewing key practitioners in the industries but focuses mainly on the in situ consumption of the Internet in a small number of households.
Recent publications
- ‘Analogue switch-off: multi-channel viewing by ‘the reluctant 50%’’. European Journal of Cultural Policy, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp.33-48, 2007.
- 'Information Society' (3,000 words), for the World Encyclopaedia of Sociology. G. Ritzer (ed.) 2007.
- Modern Media in the Home: an Ethnographic Study. John Libbey, 2004 (with D. Ivey).
- 'New Connections, Familiar Settings: Issues in the Ethnographic Study of New Media Use at Home' in C. Hine (ed) Virtual methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet. Berg, forthcoming, 2004.
- 'The Internet and Wales: Identity, Politics and Language'. Paper presented at Internet Identities and Europe conference, University of Sheffield, September 2004. Available at
http://www.shef.ac.uk/content/1/c6/04/88/28/mackay.pdf - Investigating the Information Society. Routledge, 2002 (with W. Maples & P. Reynolds). Published in Japanese, 2004.
- 'Welsh Devolution: 'Traditional' Labour and Modernising National Identity', Soundings, vol. 25, pp.83-91, Winter 2003.
- 'Reconfiguring the User: using Rapid Application Development', Social Studies of Science, vol. 30 no.5, pp.737-57, 2000 (with Chris Carne et al).
- The Media Reader. Continuity and Transformation (ed.) Sage, 1999 (with T. O'Sullivan)
- 'Connecting Wales. The Internet and National Identity'. In B. Loader (ed) The Cyberspace Divide. Routledge, 1998 (with T. Powell).
- 'Wales and its Media. Production, Consumption and Regulation'. Contemporary Wales, vol. 9, pp. 8-39, 1997 (with T. Powell).
- Doing Cultural Studies: the Story of the Sony Walkman. Sage, 1997 (with P. du Gay, S. Hall, L. Janes & K. Negus).
- 'Technologised Culture and Cultured Technology' In Theorizing Culture: an Interdisciplinary Exploration After Postmodernism. B. Adam & S. Allan (eds) University College London Press, 1995.
- 'Ideology and appropriation: towards an extension of the social shaping of technology thesis'. Social Studies of Science, vol. 22 no. 4, pp.685-716, 1992 (with G. Gillespie).
Contact Details
Sociology Department
Faculty of Social Sciences
The Open University in Wales
18 Custom House Street
CARDIFF
CF10 1AP
UK
email: a.h.mackay@open.ac.uk