Simeon J. Yates (PhD, Open University UK, 1993) is Professor of Digital Culture and Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research Environment and Postgraduate Research at University of Liverpool. His research on the social, political, and cultural impacts of digital media includes a long-standing focus on digital media and interpersonal interaction. More recently, he has worked on projects that address issues of digital inclusion and exclusion. He was seconded to the UK Government’s Department of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) in 2017 to act as research lead for the Digital Culture team. He remains the joint-chair of the DCMS Research Working Group on Digital Skills and Inclusion. His prior work covered topics such as the use of digital technologies in the workplace, digital media use during crises, and ICT use by the security services. The majority of his research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), EU, and industry. Simeon’s work has often been interdisciplinary and has predominantly involved creative and digital industry partners. He led on a major Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded interdisciplinary program (Engineering for Life) while at Sheffield Hallam. Simeon has been researching the impacts of the internet and digital media on language and culture since 1990. His PhD thesis (1993) is a large-scale linguistic comparison of speech, writing, and online interaction. Subsequent published work has covered analyses of gender differences in computer-mediated communication (CMC), gender and computer gaming, email and letter writing, and science in the mass media. Simeon has written text books on social research methods—in particular, linguistic and discourse analytic methods. https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/communication-and-media/staff/simeon-yates/

Paul Hepburn is a Research Associate at Heseltine Institute for Public Policy and Practice, University of Liverpool. His research interests lie in exploring the potential of the new digital media to enhance local democracy and local governance. He is also interested in methods and tools for analyzing and explaining the structure of online networks. Prior to pursuing an academic career, Paul worked in local government conducting research, developing policy, and, lately, implementing an e-government program.

Ronald E. Rice (PhD, Stanford University, 1982) is the Arthur N. Rupe Chair in the Social Effects of Mass Communication in the Department of Communication at University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Rice has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from University of Montreal (2010), an International Communication Association (ICA) Fellow, selected President of the ICA (2006–2007), awarded a Fulbright Award to Finland (2006), and appointed as the Wee Kim Wee Professor at the School of Communication and Information and the Visiting University Professor, both at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (Augusts 2007–2009 and June 2010). His co-authored or co-edited books include Organizations and unusual routines: A systems analysis of dysfunctional feedback processes (2010); Media ownership: Research and regulation (2008); The Internet and health care: Theory, research and practice (2006); Social consequences of internet use: Access, involvement and interaction (2002); The Internet and health communication (2001); Accessing and browsing information and communication (2001); Public communication campaigns (1981, 1989, 2001, 2012); Research methods and the new media (1988); Managing organizational innovation (1987); And The new media: Communication, research and technology (1984). He has published over 150 refereed journal articles and 70 book chapters. Dr. Rice has conducted research and published widely in communication science, public communication campaigns, computer-mediated communication systems, methodology, organizational and management theory, information systems, information science and bibliometrics, social uses and effects of the Internet, and social networks. http://www.comm.ucsb.edu/people/ronald-e-rice

Bridgette Wessels is Professor of Social Inequality, Department of Sociology, at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow. Her research focuses on the innovation, development, and use of digital technology and services in social and cultural life. Recent books include Open data and knowledge society (2017, Amsterdam University Press) and Communicative civic-ness: Social media and political culture (2018, Routledge). She is a co-investigator on the ESRC project Ways of Being in the Digital Age, and she is Principal Investigator on the AHRC funded project “Beyond the Multiplex: Audiences for Specialized Film in English Regions,” which is using digital humanities methods. Other examples of funded work include research on telehealth, social media, digital social research methodologies, women, work and technology (NordWit project), journalism in the digital age (REGPRESS project), and mobile networks (COST network: Social Networks and Travel Behaviour).

Elinor Carmi (PhD, Media and Communications Department at Goldsmiths, University of London) is a digital rights advocate, feminist, researcher, and journalist who has been working, writing, and teaching on deviant media, internet standards, feminist-technoscience, sound studies, internet history, and internet governance. Currently, she is a postdoctoral research associate in digital culture and society at Liverpool University (UK), where she works on several ESRC and AHRC projects around digital ways of being, digital inclusion, and digital literacies. In addition to writing her book about spam, she is also working on two special journal issues: One about “sonic publics,” together with Ram Sinnreich for the International Journal of Communication, and the other about (re)designing time, together with Britt Paris, for Theory, Culture & Society.