Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
This chapter explores contextual factors, dimensions, and key markers of parents’ algorithm literacies within a broader context of parenting and parenthood in a datafied age. The chapter draws on media and digital literacies scholarship to examine the competencies, conversations, and events that shape parents’ literacies with algorithmic interfaces. The chapter identifies four intersecting dimensions of parents’ algorithm literacies: algorithm awareness, technical competencies, critical capacities, and parents’ abilities to advocate for their own and their children’s best interests. The chapter notes that algorithm literacies are unequal, and shaped by the various resources and constraints parents face in their daily lives, also drawing attention to the power held by platforms and other institutions and the importance of holding them accountable.
This chapter considers parents’ engagement with the news, as the world in which they are raising children often appears replete with crises, risks, and much fodder for anxiety. The chapter unpacks parents’ negotiations of algorithmic news recommendations using the metaphor of the gateway, where parents’ behaviours as users, work as part of complex and wider aggregated environments, in the generation of fine-tuned and tailored news recommendations in a recursive loop. The chapter speaks of the gateway not as a site where parents’ agency dissipates, or where they are passive recipients of platform power. Instead, the chapter reveals the often fleeting and ephemeral strategies and tactics parents employ to negotiate news recommendations into their everyday parenting journeys. Parents’ practices of negotiating news recommendation algorithms ranged widely between some parents being very aware of algorithmic presence but not necessarily able to articulate its roles, and others actively training and tweaking things, to curate a particular view of the news for themselves. The chapter draws attention particularly to the role of time and the shaping role of children growing up, in terms of the changing rapport between algorithmic news recommendations and parents’ hopes and worries about their children.
In today's digital societies, parenting is shaped by algorithms daily - in search engines, social media, kids' entertainment, the news and more. But how much are parents aware of the algorithms shaping their parenting and daily lives? How can they prepare for children’s futures in a world dominated by data, algorithms, automation and AI?
This groundbreaking study of 30 English families sheds light on parents’ hopes and fears, their experiences with algorithms in searching, sharing and consuming news and information, and their awareness and knowledge of algorithms at large.
Looking beyond tech skills and media panics, this book is an essential read for social scientists, policy-makers and general readers seeking to understand parenting in datafied societies.
This chapter explores how parents navigate and interpret opaque and constantly evolving search algorithms, as they seek information, advice and support online. The chapter examines how parents make sense of, manage, and work within or against search algorithms across various platforms, positioning these as relational, rather than individual practices. Using several examples, the chapter illustrates how parents interpret search results and rankings, and how these interpretations function within the broader contexts of family, domestic labour, parenting cultures, and societal norms. The chapter speaks about engaging with search and search algorithms as a relational task, embedded in parents’ daily routines and interactions. It discusses how parents perceive the credibility and sequencing of search results, sometimes naturalising and personifying algorithms in their talk. The chapter argues that parents’ negotiation of search algorithms is a relational interpretative practice, involving complex interplays between commercial influences, family life, parenting cultures, platform power, and parents’ agency, however ephemeral, as users.
This chapter examines parents’ talk about algorithmic futures, particularly focusing on algorithms and automated decision-making within the public domain, as it unpacks parents’ hopes, fears, and current and planned actions. The chapter suggests that, while risks are perceived and managed individually, parents also present visions and hopes for the collective good, revealing expectations of institutions and stakeholders across various domains. The chapter draws out parents’ concerns about children’s visibility in algorithmic systems, including both invisibility and heightened visibility. The chapter highlights the binaries parents present between humans and technology, while articulating their preference for human intervention. Parents value the nuanced, complex, and potentially sometimes flawed input of humans, over the perceived coldness of algorithmic processes. The chapter notes how little was said, if at all, about the presence of human input and intervention behind the very systems of automation and datafication that parents appeared to critique. Parents’ talk reveals broader societal expectations for transparency, accountability, and ethical considerations in the deployment of data-driven technologies. The chapter outlines the importance of understanding these parental perspectives as part of centring the best interests of publics, amidst the increasing influence of algorithms in public and private life.
This chapter explores how parents perceive and interpret their children’s interactions with social media algorithms, drawing upon user-centric research on algorithms, as well as research on sharenting amidst datafication. The chapter focuses on parents’ understanding and subsequent strategies regarding platform algorithms in the context of their children’s lives. It identifies four modes of understanding: misunderstanding the logics of platform algorithms, parking or delaying thinking about algorithms till children are older, understanding children’s and families’ relationships with platforms as transactional, and proactive stances in directly shaping children’s interfaces with algorithms. The chapter notes that the same parent might occupy different positions at different points in their child-raising journey, or indeed, in relation to different platform environments. The chapter argues that parents’ sometimes flawed perceptions of their children’s interactions with algorithms should be examined not through a lens of blame or individual parental responsibility, but within the broader contexts of the diverse resources and constraints families face.
This chapter comes back to summarize the themes of this work, which are queer intimate love, queer reproduction and parenting, queer family, and queer futurity. The practices of queer conjugal relationships, parenting, and family formation documented in this book suggest innovative and diverse forms of belonging, family, and relatedness beyond blood ties and the heterosexual nuclear family; at the same time, class stratification and gender inequalities are often reproduced during these processes. Queer relationships and families have emerged both within and outside the dominant kinship norms co-constructed by the existing state policy and patrilineal familism. Consequently, this book proposes an approach to comprehending queer families and relationships that challenges the dominant discourse surrounding Chinese kinship and queer modernity. It makes it clear that the ‘queering’ of kinship extends beyond the realm of non-normative sexual desires and permeates various aspects of society at large.
The introductory chapter sets the stage by presenting the socio-cultural and legal backdrop against which queer intimate relationships and familial life unfold in Chinese society. In general, Chinese state policies and the patrilineal kinship system create a challenging environment for alternative life choices and non-conventional family structures. Consequently, Chinese non-heterosexual individuals are rarely seen as capable of establishing enduring relationships or forming families without having to forgo their queer identities. This results in queer parents remaining largely invisible to the public eye, with limited social research conducted on their practices. This chapter outlines the theoretical framework and the primary arguments that underpin the book. Drawing on new kinship studies and queer theory, as well as insights from prior queer ethnography, this work seeks to contribute to fresh insights into Chinese queer life, assisted reproduction, and kinship.
This chapter focuses on the changing understanding of family in urban China in the context of social changes, migration, and queer politics. It investigates the concept of ‘jia’ (family/home) for Chinese non-heterosexual people through its cultural and socio-legal meanings. This chapter unfolds the various modalities of the non-heterosexual family. By capturing the emerging family-forming practices and the image of the role-model rainbow family promoted in queer communities, it stresses the dynamic interplay of socio-economic class, state law, and moral values that come to articulate queer families and relatedness in today’s queer everyday lives. It further explores how these queer family structures fluctuate between visibility and obscurity in distinct temporal and spatial contexts, thereby complicating conventional dichotomies such as assimilation versus resistance, visibility versus invisibility, and modernity versus tradition in everyday existence.
This chapter discusses queer intimate relationships within the shifting landscapes of role terms, love, dating culture, and modernity. It explores the evolving attitudes of non-heterosexual individuals towards same-sex relationships and the dynamic mobilization of seemingly gendered relationship modes. Investigating the strategies employed by queer couples to sustain cohabitating romantic relationships in a societal context where same-sex marriage is not yet recognized, the chapter highlights the centrality of creating an unbreakable concept of jiban/mutuality, a theme developed throughout the book. Drawing from detailed life histories, this chapter uncovers how economic capital and legal constraints shape queer subjects’ perceptions and practices of intimate love in urban China. It underscores how the economic and migrant-driven environments of Shenzhen and Guangzhou influence career and romantic opportunities, revealing the material foundations of loving relationships in the lives of Chinese queer individuals.
