Pip Thornton

Dr, DR

Accepting PhD Students

Personal profile

Research Interests

My research concerns the politics and ethics of existence in online spaces, with particular emphasis on the exploitation and monetisation of language by digital technology companies. Beginning with my PhD research critiquing the power held by Google’s search and advertising platforms, my work has always been around the changing values of language in a digital age, and I’ve used various creative and performative methods to do that in the past. My concerns are that when language is turned into data for storage or dissemination online, like all data it gains an economic value that negates and usurps the creative, the poetic, or the human value of the original words. That economic value is extracted by big tech companies such as Google, X, Meta, Amazon and now the AI behemoths such as OpenAI and Anthropic, which leaves us with the empty husks of language – the linguistic detritus that fills our search results with rubbish, boosts fake news stories, and now spews out AI nonsense generated using the stolen creative content of human authors without their knowledge or consent. Turning language into data, giving it economic value beyond its context and processing it through algorithmic systems designed specifically to make money for private companies is downright dangerous. Methodologically, I specialise in using artistic / creative intervention as a means of disseminating my work beyond academia.

Education/Academic qualification

Geopolitics & Cybersecurity, Doctor in Philosophy, Language in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction: A Critique of Linguistic Capitalism, Royal Holloway University of London

Sept 2013Feb 2019

English, Master of Arts, Kings College London

20102012

English Literature, Bachelor of Arts, Open University

19992005

Arts, History & Politics, Bachelor of Arts, University of Liverpool

19921995

Research Themes and Networks

  • Data & Digital
  • College of Science and Engineering Research Themes

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