Sonia Livingstone is a professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Taking a comparative, critical and contextualised approach, her research examines how the changing conditions of mediation are reshaping everyday practices and possibilities for action. Much of Sonia’s time these days is concerned with Children’s Rights in the Digital Age.
Sonia has published 20 books on media audiences, especially children and young people’s risks and opportunities, media literacy and rights in the digital environment, including her latest book Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shape Children’s Lives.
Sonia, did you always intend to go into academia? If not, what made you pursue a career in this field?
I like to think that I had a choice of career, that there were many things I could’ve done. But since both my parents are academics, I guess I was heavily shaped by my family circumstances. I always grew up around books, students, arguments about ideas, talk about university politics, a certain intellectual way of thinking about the world. Recently, going through the boxes of the childhood things that my mother had, I found some of my early books – written from the age of 6! So although I did try my hand at being the kind of psychologist that works with patients, and a year advising people on their rights in a Citizens’ Advice Bureau, I felt at home ever since I settled in the academy. Although it has its trials and tribulations, it has always seemed worth the struggle: a society without its universities would be so impoverished.
What made you interested in media and communications and specifically the area you research?
Well I began as a psychologist, but the whole direction of my career has been from the individual towards the social. While doing my PhD in social psychology, even though I loved its insistence on both the social and the psychological at all times, and especially on the nature of social interactions, I became increasingly frustrated at the emphasis on the interpersonal rather than (for the most part) on a world view that prioritises history, institutions, politics, culture. During my PhD I was drawn to media and communications as a resolutely multidisciplinary endeavour, full of debates and disagreement. To my mind, it concerned a vital part of people’s lives that social psychologists tended to ignore, or study in narrow ways. And it raised great questions about how people, in their everyday interactions and understandings, play a role within what Stuart Hall called the circuit of culture. So to understand people’s mediated lives – as audiences - I found myself reading about culture, semiotics, anthropology, literary theory, sociology, history and politics. Somewhere along the way I gained a driving concern with people’s ordinary experiences, untold stories and often unheard voices. From a focus on media audiences, to child audiences in particular, was an obvious step, since children are among the least heard in the public sphere – though it was only much later that I adopted a child rights framing to highlight this as a problem. But I hadn’t anticipated that children – usually either the focus of nostalgic longing or moral panics – were about to become key actors in socio-technological change: the digital natives of a fast-changing media and communications landscape. So though they were generally still unheard, their experiences, and adults’ views of them, became the canaries in the coal mine of the digital age. Understand what’s happening with children, and perhaps we can see where we’re all heading.
What advice would you give students who are thinking of pursuing a PhD or career in academia?
It’s tempting to say, don’t! From the perspective of my generation, everything often seems to be getting worse. But when I was doing my PhD, my dad told me sternly that I should not enter academia because, for him too, everything seemed to be getting worse. So without wishing to minimise the challenges faced by today’s graduating cohort, I can only suggest that each generation faces distinct and real challenges. But in some form or other, higher education, and social science research, must continue. I looked for my first job just as then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared ‘there’s no such thing as society.’ Since then, there’s been many ups and downs – but just enough ups to keep us all hanging in there. And when I listen to friends who chose different careers, I have to conclude – and perhaps this is just me – that I made the best decision.
What was the main issue of the day in terms of media and communications when you were a student? How has it developed?
I guess there were several. The emergence of life politics (especially, for me, feminism) as an orientation to living, and to theory. Arguments about the end of ideology and the emergence of arguments from diversity, and of voice. A bit later, the recognition and growth of globalisation – again as a phenomenon, a way of life (for some) and a lens for academic work. It amazes me to look back and realise that I was trained to teach British students about British media. Today things could not be more different. I find this exciting. Our field is often at the cutting edge of new developments and, compared to some, remarkably open to new ideas and pressing challenges. That doesn’t mean it is necessarily much listened to, or influential on others. But even that gives us a certain freedom to experiment. And anyway, at last, it is widely recognised on all sides that we live in a thoroughly – and often problematically – mediated world.
What do you think is the most important contemporary issue in the field of media and communications, both for soon-to-graduate students and for long time professionals in the field?
That’s an impossible question. If there were just one issue, and if we all agreed on what it is, life would be boring, and narrow. What I love about our field is that we can find so many causes to be passionate about, and so many distinctive issues to examine with care. Both technological innovation and social change drive us towards new and pressing issues, and those are important. But highlighting certain issues always leaves other issues in the dark, and you never know when they may become significant and for whom. So we pursue a wide canvas, and we must keep talking to each other to find the creative intersections.
What do you enjoy most about teaching students and why?
Many things. Perhaps here I’ll highlight three. I love figuring out what drives each individual and guiding them, if I can, towards their next step, preferably something enlightening and inspiring. I find myself endlessly rethinking how to make our field relevant, and the ideas as clear as possible. That means listening very hard to students’ confusions or uncertainties (and my own), and trying over and again to play with ideas and forms of explanation till we find mutual understanding. Third, I love the virtuous circle whereby I learn from students, and I hope they learn from me. I can illustrate these three points together by noting how each cohort of students leads me to revise my course for next year. I’m always jotting down which readings ‘worked’ and why, which framings found their mark or missed it, what new readings students referred to in seminars or essays that I could then bring into next year’s reading list. A course is never finished, but it always evolves, with the students, with me, with the times we’re all facing. That’s so interesting.
What do you like doing when you’re not busy being an academic?
I don’t have much time for anything else. My children (and I suspect my PhD students) think I’m pretty obsessed. But right now, during lockdown, I have had a bit more time than before for my garden, for yoga, and for my family. Oh yes, and I’ve recently learned to make ice-cream!