Dr Tim Jordan
Senior Lecturer
Co-Director MA Digital Culture and Society
Email timothy.jordan@kcl.ac.uk
Tel +44 (0)20 7848 1100
Culture, Media and Creative Industries
King’s College London
5D Chesham Building
Strand Campus
London
WC2R 2LS
Biography
Tim Jordan is a Senior Lecturer at King's College London, leading development there of analysis of digital culture. He is a member of two departments, Culture, Media and Creative Industries and Digital Humanities. Tim has been involved in analysis of the social and cultural meaning of the internet and cyberspace since the mid-1990s. He is currently working on a book for Pluto Press on the politics of information and on the idea of 'being in the zone' among surfers and computer programmers. His recent work has been about communication and the internet, published in Internet, Society, Culture; communicative practices before and after the internet (Bloomsbury 2013) and he has previously published: Hacking: digital media and technological determinism (Polity 2008), Cyberpower (Routledge 1999) and, with Paul Taylor, Hacktivism and Cyberwars (Routledge 2004). Tim has also played a role in analysing social movements and popular protest with publications including Activism!: direct action, hacktivism and the future of society (Reaktion 2002), as co-editor of Storming the Millennium (Lawrence and Wishart1999, with Adam Lent) and as a founding editor of the Taylor and Francis journal Social Movement Studies. In addition to his books on social movements and internet cultures, Tim has published on Pokemon, surfing and technology and cultural theory. Tim began work at King's College London in 2011 leading the development of research and teaching into digital culture, including working on the MA Digital Culture and Society and the development of a BA Digital Culture. Prior to this Tim worked in Sociology at the Open University for eleven years, contributing widely to teaching and co-editing the books Security: sociology and the making of social worlds (Manchester University Press 2008, with Simon Carter and Sophie Watson) and Social Change (Blackwell 2002, with Steve Pile). Tim has been Head of the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King's College London and of the Department of Sociology at the Open University. Tim's work has been translated into seven languages.
Research Interests
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Internet Studies
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Hacking and Hacktivism
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Online Gaming
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Social and Cultural Theory
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Social Movements and Popular Protest
Selected Publications
Publications
'Hacking and Power: social and technological determinism in the digital age', First Monday, 14(7), 2009, available at http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2417/2240
Hacking: digital media and technological determinism, Cambridge; Polity (Also available at King's College London library and from the publisher).
'Politics and the Internet', Hayhtio, T. and Rinne, J. (eds) (2008)
Net working/Networking; Politics on the Internet, Tampere, University of Tampere Press, pp254-280, (also published in Finnish as '"Haktivism' kolme tyypia--Nettiteknologioiden politiikasta', Politiikka, 1, 2008, pp.21-36)
Hacktivism and Cyberwars; rebels with a cause?, London; Routledge, co-authored with Dr Paul Taylor
Activism!: direct activism, hacktivism and the future of society, London; Reaktion Books
Conferences
Participating in the Cultural Production in the Digital Age international research network: http://www.culturedigitally.org/index.php?view=person&person=8
Teaching
Research
Dr Tim Jordan has researched extensively on digital cultures. This covers a wide range of topics that relate to the effects the rise of the internet to mass use combined with increasing forms of digitisation has had.
Tim has been working recently on both pre and post-Internet communication in order to understand what changes the Internet may or may not have brought in communication. This project involves an archival study of 19th Century letters to colonial Australia and an in-depth ethnographic examination of online gaming in persistent virtual worlds (World of Warcraft). This work will result in a book published by Continuum press due out in 2013.
Following this major project on changes in communication, Tim is now working on two projects. The first is to examine the nature of 'information' in the twenty-first century as a political configuration in its own right, comparable to such other configurations as class, gender and so on. At the same time, he is developing work on the nature of digital industries, exploring whether internet and digitisation technologies underpin a particular economic form and, if so, how this relates to cultural and creative industries and manufacturing industries.
Tim has worked extensively over many years on digital cultures. He has completed projects on hacking, hacktivism, power in cyberspace and the nature of online politics. In all these he has been concerned to examine the nature of technologies, cultures and politics.
Tim has also explored the nature of protest, examining how cultures and sub-cultures were a key part of the rise of the alter-globalisation movement. Tim is also extending his work through a collaborative project on comparison between music and sport (in his case, surfing) in relation to theories of the body and post-humanity.
Teaching Portfolio
Dr Tim Jordan is Programme Director of the MA Digital Culture and Society. He teaches on the core modules for the MA Digital Culture and Society and his own optional module Digital Industries and Internet Cultures.
Current/Previous students
John Twineham, PhD. A Foucauldian study of Education Welfare Officers.
PhD Supervision
Dr Jordan is currently supervising four students and so has limited capacity to take on any more students. However, he is interested in work close to his research interests particularly around issues of information politics, online political action, social media and cultural theory.
He would encourage any interested applicants to also look at Dr Paolo Gerbaudo an Dr Btihaj Ajana as potential supervisers.
Dr Jordan is currently supervising:
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Xiaojin Chen "From the Virtual World to the Real World: A Study of the Effects of the Internet on Collective Democratic Action in China."
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Paula Serafini "Art as a Strategy: The Role of the Arts in Contemporary Protest Movements in the UK."
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Jeremy Matthew "The Panic Button: Public and professional news and information habits through new media technologies in an era of economic crises."
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Photini Vrikki " Social media storytelling: The Occupy movement and the narratives constructing it."
Dr Jordan has examined over 20 PhD theses in the UK.
Expertise and Public Engagement
Dr Tim Jordan is actively involved in two blogs:
http://blogs2.cch.kcl.ac.uk/madcs/ Analysis of digital culture.
http://culturedigitally.org/ International research group on cultural production in the digital age. This Involves staff from outside King’s College London.
Dr Tim Jordan's discusses Age and Computer Games: BBC World Service: