Dr Grant Blank

Survey Research Fellow

Dr Grant Blank

Grant Blank's work focuses on the social and cultural implications of the Internet and related new communications technology. In addition, he does research methods and statistics, and teaches on the OII social statistics courses.

Email: grant.blank@oii.ox.ac.uk

Tel: +44 (0)1865 612336

Profile

Grant Blank is Survey Research Fellow at OII. He is a sociologist who studies the social and cultural impact of the Internet and other new communication media. He is also interested in cultural sociology, especially reviews and cultural evaluation.

Grant began his career as an independent consultant based in Chicago Illinois specializing in research design, statistical analysis, and database design. He previously taught at American University in Washington DC. He completed his PhD on the sociology of reviews at the University of Chicago in 1999, and joined OII in 2010.

Research interests

social and cultural impact of the Internet and other new media, quantitative analysis, methodology, cultural sociology, sociology of science and technology, artificial intelligence

Positions held at the OII

  • Survey Research Fellow, January 2010 -

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Research

Current projects

  • Me, My Spouse and the Internet: Meeting, Dating and Marriage in the Digital Age

    January 2008 -

    The project uses survey data from Australian and UK couples to look at the significance and impact of the Internet on intimate relationships, including how people use ICTs to meet each other and maintain relationships, and how ICTs affect their behaviour.

  • OxIS: Oxford Internet Surveys

    January 2003 -

    Research on access, use and attitudes to the Internet in Britain based on biennial surveys covering (for example) digital and social inclusion and exclusion, social networking, safety and privacy concerns, Internet regulation, and behaviour.

  • WIP: World Internet Project

    January 2003 -

    The World Internet Project (WIP) carries out panel surveys in over twenty countries to help understand how individuals adopt and use the Internet and other technologies, as well as the resulting social, economic, political and everyday-life implications.

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Publications

Articles

Books

  • Fielding, N., Lee, R.M. and Blank, G. (eds) (2008) Handbook of Online Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
  • Blank, G. (2007) Critics, Ratings, and Society: The Sociology of Reviews. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Wilkinson, L., Blank, G. and Gruber, C.P. (1996) Desktop Data Analysis with SYSTAT. New York, NY: Prentice Hall.
  • Blank, G., McCartney, J.L. and Brent, E. (eds) (1989) New Technology in Sociology: Practical Applications in Research and Work. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
  • Ginsburg, N., Osborn, J. and Blank, G. (1986) Geographical Perspectives on the Wealth of Nations. University of Chicago. Department of Geography. Research monograph #220.

Chapters

  • Blank, G. and Dutton, W.H. (2012) The Emergence of Next Generation Internet Users. In J.Hartley, J.Burgess and A.Bruns (eds) The Blackwell Companion to New Media Dynamics. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
  • Lee, R.M., Fielding, N. and Blank, G. (2008) The Internet as a research medium. In: Fielding, N., Lee, R.M. and Blank, G. (eds) Handbook of Online Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 3-20.
  • Blank, G. (2008) Online research methods and social theory. In: Fielding, N., Lee, R.M. and Blank, G. (eds) Handbook of Online Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 537-549.
  • Blank, G. (2007) Food and Cultural Consumption. In: Ritzer, G. (ed.) Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. New York, NY: Blackwell, pp. 721-724.

Conference papers

Presentations

  • Blank, G. (2011) The Internet in Britain 2011. Prime Minister's Digital Policy Group. 10 Downing Street, London. December 8, 2011.
  • Blank, G. (2010) Toward a Systematic Theory of Consumer Choice and the Internet. Annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Atlanta, GA. August 16, 2010. ESA RN02 Sociology of the Arts Conference. September 2, 2010.
  • Blank, G. and Spalter-Roth, R. (2008) Satisfaction with Doing Science: Convergence or a Two-Tier System? Annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Boston, MA. August 4, 2008.
  • Blank, G. (2008) Why do Audiences read Reviews? Annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Boston, MA August 1, 2008.
  • Blank, G. (2007) Online Research Methods and Social Theory. ESRC e-Society Programme Colloquium. Royal Society, London, UK. March 29, 2007.
  • Blank, G. (2006) Status and the Sociology of Choice. Annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Montreal, Canada. August 13, 2006.
  • Blank, G. and Coats-Crowson, J. (2005) Measuring Cultural Values in National Development. Annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Philadelphia PA. August 2005.
  • Blank, G. (2005) Worldwide Data Documentation Standards and the Future of Social Science Research. Annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society. Washington DC. March 18, 2005.
  • Blank, G. (2004) Toward a Sociological Theory of Choice. Annual meeting to the American Sociological Association. San Francisco CA. August 14, 2004.
  • Blank, G. and Holland, M.E. (2004) Perceived Effects of Popular Culture and Censorship of Youth. Annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. San Francisco CA. August 2004.
  • Blank, G. (2004) A Sociology of Choice. Annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. Washington DC. July 9, 2004.
  • Blank, G. (2002) The Internet and the Entertainment Industry: A Cultural Analysis. Annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Chicago IL. August 18, 2002.
  • Blank, G. (2000) Internet Data Sources for Teaching Globalization. Annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Washington, DC. August 15, 2000.
  • Blank, G. (1999) The Nature and Types of Reviews: A Study of a Social Institution. Annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Chicago. August 10, 1999.
  • Blank, G. (1998) 'Their Power is in the Stars': Reviews, Audience Involvement, and Cultural Hierarchies. Annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. San Francisco. August 24, 1998.
  • Blank, G. (1997) Social Science Computing Beyond HTML. Keynote speech for Conference on Computing for the Social Sciences. Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA. June 26, 1997.
  • Blank, G. (1996) The Data Documentation Initiative: Building an International Standard. Annual meeting of the Association of Public Data Users. Washington, DC. October 29, 1996.
  • Blank, G. (1996) Statistical Graphics for Sociologists. Annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. New York, NY. August 19, 1996.
  • Blank, G. (1995) Research, Text, and Computing: Retrieving and Organizing your Words. Annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Washington, DC. August 21, 1995.
  • Blank, G. (1994) The Science of Software Reviews. Conference on Computing for the Social Sciences. College Park, MD. June 3, 1994.
  • Blank, G. (1992) Expressing Social Theories with Rule-Based Expert Systems. Annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Pittsburgh, PA. August 24, 1992.
  • Blank, G. (1991) Models of Sociological Theory. World Congress of Expert Systems. Orlando, FL. December 19, 1991.

Reports

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Teaching

Courses taught at the OII

DPhil students supervised at the OII

Current students

Completed students

  • Bianca Reisdorf

    Internet Non-Use: A Comparative Study of Great Britain and Sweden

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Webcasts

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News

  • From Euro 2012 to Gangnam Style: what Britons Googled most this year

    11 December 2012 The Guardian

    Grant Blank looks at some facts behind the headlines of Google's annual Zeitgeist list of the top UK search terms. The list reflects popular concerns and also highlights the question of whether popular culture is really important.

  • How to lift the digital age barrier

    30 November 2011 The Guardian

    According to figures from the OII's Oxford Internet Surveys (OxIS), Internet use among people aged 65 and over sits at only about 30% and has not changed much since 2005, despite campaigns to get more older people connected.

  • Are you a Next Generation User of the Internet?

    17 October 2011 University of Oxford

    The OxIS 2011 survey shows that nearly half of Internet users in Britain are 'Next Generation Users', who routinely access the Internet on the move using portable devices - more than double the proportion in 2007.

  • The Internet in Britain, 2011: Topline Findings from the Oxford Internet Surveys (OxIS)

    17 October 2011 Oxford Internet Institute

    Topline findings from the Oxford Internet Surveys (OxIS) 2011 Report: "Next Generation Users: The Internet in Britain 2011", presenting data on British access, use and attitudes to the Internet 2003-2011.

  • Silver Surfers: You have 65+ friends

    7 June 2011 The Independent

    Grant Blank comments on the current boom in adoption by older users of the Internet in an article on the first generation pioneers using social networks in retirement.

  • Employers look for the tweet smell of success

    11 April 2011 The Independent

    Social media skills are increasingly expected of workers leading to demand for lessons in Twitter and other social media: Grant Blank comments on employers using these sites to vet potential or current employees.

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Blog

  • In the field!

    OxIS Blog on 31 Jan 2013 13:57PM

    The 2013 OxIS survey questionnaire was finished on Monday and it will go into the field beginning Saturday 2 February. We have been working on the questions for most of the past month. New questions are in response to changes in the Internet since the [...]

  • Non-users and Ex-users: Lifestage, Education and Income

    OxIS Blog on 30 May 2012 11:25AM

    Published by Grant Blank on 30 May 2012 The previous blog post showed that gender seems to have little influence on who are non- and ex-users of the Internet, whereas age is strongly related to non-use. In this post we examine life stage, education and [...]

  • Non-users and Ex-users: Gender and Age

    OxIS Blog on 28 Apr 2012 14:38PM

    Published by Grant Blank on 24 April 2012 In this post we explore some basic demographic characteristics of non-users and ex-users of the Internet. The first graph shows that the proportions of non- and ex-users among men and women are almost identical. [...]

  • Civic by default - when opting in is not a choice

    OxIS Blog on 13 Apr 2012 13:54PM

    This is a guest post by OII Research Fellow Rebecca Eynon and Anne Geniets. They discuss the topical issue of the UK's digital inclusion strategy, discussed at last week's OII workshop on low and discontinued Internet use by young people in Britain. [...]

  • On Non-users and Ex-users of Internet

    OxIS Blog on 16 Mar 2012 12:19PM

    Published by Grant Blank on 16 March 2012 This blog post is the first of a series on people who have never used the Internet before (non-users) and people who have had used the Internet in the past but do not use it now (ex-users). As the Internet plays [...]

  • OxIS Featured in News

    OxIS Blog on 2 Mar 2012 12:07PM

    Published by Grant Blank on 2 March 2012 The Oxford Internet Survey was featured in the current issue of the Stata News. Stata News goes out to around 100,000 users of the statistical software package Stata. Stata was particularly interested in the fact [...]

  • Next Generation Users

    OxIS Blog on 15 Feb 2012 09:24AM

    Published by Grant Blank on 15 February 2012 Results from the 2011 wave of Oxford Internet Surveys show several notable trends. Mobile phones have become virtually universal and nearly half (49%) of users used them to access the Internet. In addition to [...]

  • Photographs from the OxIS 2011 Report Launch (House of Commons)

    OxIS Blog on 3 Feb 2012 16:04PM

    Published by Grant Blank on 3 February 2012 It’s been a while since the OxIS 2011 Report has been published. But hey, it’s never too late to show you some pictures from the Launch! We want to take you back to October 2011. It was a cloudy [...]

  • Measuring Use of Social Networking Sites

    OxIS Blog on 20 Dec 2011 13:39PM

    Published by Grant Blank on 20 December 2011 Survey research, which is at the core of the OxIS project, presents several measurement challenges. Establishing reliability is especially difficult when measuring concepts where observational data might yield [...]

  • Online Gambling and Trust

    OxIS Blog on 12 Dec 2011 13:43PM

    Published by Grant Blank on 12 December 2011 Regardless of whether internet gambling is illegal (in the US) or legal (Europe), it requires trust. In bricks-and-mortar casinos the long-run odds favour the house, so there is a built-in probability of [...]

  • Do attitudes toward technology influence Internet use?

    OxIS Blog on 30 Nov 2011 11:37AM

    Published by Grant Blank on 30 November 2011 Here at the Oxford Internet Institute we have been exploring the effect of attitudes towards technology on Internet adoption. Positive attitudes toward technology may make people more interested in adopting new [...]

  • Highlights from the OxIS 2011 Report Launch

    OxIS Blog on 20 Oct 2011 09:41AM

    Published by Grant Blank on 20 October 2011 On Monday we launched the 2011 OxIS report: "Next Generation Users: The Internet in Britain" (PDF, 3.1MB) at an event at the House of Commons. The report and top findings were outlined by Professor [...]

  • The 2011 OxIS Report Launch

    OxIS Blog on 12 Oct 2011 20:04PM

    Published by Grant Blank on 17 October 2011 The Report of the 2011 OxIS survey has just been released: Next Generation Users: The Internet in Britain 2011 (pdf, 3.1MB). At the report launch we will make public interesting new findings as well as updating [...]

  • Data! We have Data!

    OxIS Blog on 17 May 2011 17:54PM

    Published by Grant Blank on 17 May 2011 The 2011 wave of data collection is finished and we have 2,057 respondents. We have gone through several waves of data cleaning. For example, we were able to recover many missing occupational codes. In some cases, [...]

  • In the Field!

    OxIS Blog on 30 Mar 2011 12:13PM

    Published by Grant Blank on 31 March 2011 Data collection has begun for the 2011 wave of the Oxford Internet Surveys, with ICM Research hired to collect a random sample of about 2,000 British respondents. We expect to be in the field for four [...]

  • New questions for the Oxford Internet Surveys (OxIS 2011)

    OxIS Blog on 9 Dec 2010 14:14PM

    Published by Grant Blank on 9 December 2010 We are currently in the process of setting questions for the 2011 OxIS survey, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk a bit about survey questions. Essentially, good questions are very important [...]

  • "Expanding the Connected Kingdom": OII works with Google on policies for stimulating the UK Internet Economy

    OxIS Blog on 18 Nov 2010 11:47AM

    This is a guest post by Victoria Nash, OII Policy and Research Fellow. She discusses the topical issue of the UK's Internet economy, an issue to be discussed at next week's OII-Google forum on policies and strategies to support the Internet [...]

  • Young people and the digital divide: data from the Oxford Internet Surveys

    OxIS Blog on 15 Nov 2010 15:45PM

    Published by Grant Blank on 15 November 2010 I have posted below the comments I prepared for a panel on 'Young People and the Digital Divide', organized by Catch22 at the Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference, Liverpool (20 September  2010), during [...]

  • Trust on the Internet now exceeds trust in other major institutions

    OxIS Blog on 25 Oct 2010 14:32PM

    Published by Grant Blank on 25 October 2010 Trust is fundamental in personal and commercial relationships. Trust online is problematic because products or people cannot be directly observed thus many cues used in face-to-face interaction are absent. [...]

  • What is more important for Internet use: age or income?

    OxIS Blog on 28 Sep 2010 23:00PM

    Published by Grant Blank on 29 September 2010 I was talking to some friends recently about the Internet and I described how Internet use declines with age, but it increases as income goes up. A friend asked me which was more important, age or income? I [...]

Last updated on: 21 May 2013