Nick Couldry
| Nick Couldry | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| 💼 Occupation | Sociologist, academic |
| Known for | Data colonialism, media as practice, symbolic power |
| Title | Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory Emeritus |
| 🌐 Website | nickcouldry |
Nick Couldry is a British sociologist of media and culture, and Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory Emeritus at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is widely regarded as one of the leading social theorists of media, with work spanning media audiences, symbolic power, democratic voice, data ethics, and data colonialism.
Education
Couldry's first degree was in Classics and Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He subsequently studied at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he completed both an MA (1994) and a PhD (1998) in Media and Communications.
Career
Couldry began his academic career at the LSE Department of Sociology and Media and Communications (2001–2006). He subsequently held a position at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he became joint Head of the Department of Media and Communications before returning to LSE in September 2013.
He is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory Emeritus and Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. Since 2017, he has been a Faculty Associate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.
He has held visiting positions at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Stockholm, RMIT Melbourne, Roskilde University, Södertörn University, University of Technology Sydney, the University of Toulouse, and MIT. He was appointed Adjunct Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT, Melbourne, in June 2014.
He has been awarded honorary doctorates by Södertörn University (Sweden) and Tampere University (Finland).
Research and scholarly contributions
Media as practice
One of Couldry's most influential contributions is his framework of media as practice, which shifts the focus of media studies away from texts and institutions toward what people actually do in relation to media in everyday life. This approach has been widely adopted in media and communications research.
Symbolic power and media
Couldry's early work examined how symbolic power has been historically concentrated in media institutions — particularly television and the press — allowing them to define social and political reality. He approaches media from the perspective of symbolic power, exploring how media and communications infrastructures contribute to social, political, cultural, and ethical orders.
Voice and democracy
In Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics after Neoliberalism (2010), Couldry developed a normative framework around the concept of voice — the capacity of individuals and groups to give an account of their lives — arguing that neoliberalism systematically undermines this capacity and that democratic politics requires its renewal.
Data colonialism
Couldry's most recent contribution is the framework of data colonialism, developed jointly with Ulises Mejias. Arguing by analogy with historical colonialism, the framework holds that the large-scale extraction of human behavioural data by platforms and corporations constitutes a new form of colonial appropriation — not of land and bodies, but of human life and social relations. This framework was developed in The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating it for Capitalism (Stanford University Press, 2019).
In 2020, Couldry co-founded, with Mejias and Paola Ricaurte, the Tierra Común network, which connects scholars and activists — primarily from Latin America — working to resist data colonialism.
Artificial intelligence and human life
More recently, Couldry's work has turned to the risks and implications of profit-driven artificial intelligence, particularly its effects on human conceptions of rationality, social solidarity, and the conditions of democratic life.
Selected bibliography
Books
- The Place of Media Power: Pilgrims and Witnesses of the Media Age (Routledge, 2000)
- Inside Culture: Re-imagining the Method of Cultural Studies (Sage, 2000)
- Media Rituals: A Critical Approach (Routledge, 2003)
- Listening Beyond the Echoes: Media, Ethics and Agency in the New Communications Environment (Paradigm, 2006)
- Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics after Neoliberalism (Sage, 2010)
- Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice (Polity, 2012)
- Ethics of Media (ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
- The Mediated Construction of Reality (with Andreas Hepp, Polity, 2016)
- The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating it for Capitalism (with Ulises Ali Mejias, Stanford University Press, 2019)
- Media: Why It Matters (Polity, 2019)
- Media Voice Space and Power: Essays of Refraction (Routledge, 2020)
- Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back (with Ulises Ali Mejias, 2024)
- The Space of the World: Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What if it Can't? (Polity, 2024)
External links
Category:British sociologists Category:Media studies scholars Category:London School of Economics faculty Category:Academics of Goldsmiths, University of London Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford Category:Alumni of Goldsmiths, University of London Category:Living people
References
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