David Gauntlett & Al Gore Presentation

David Gauntlett is a British Sociologist and media theorist. His earlier work concerned contemporary media audiences, and has moved towards a focus on the everyday making and sharing of digital media and social media, and the role of such media in self-identity and self-expression.He graduated from the University of York in Sociology in 1992. He then took his PhD and then taught at the University of Leeds for 9 years. He was then appointed Professor of Media and Audiences at Bournemouth University. In 2006 he joined the school of Media, Arts and Design at University of Westminster as a Professor of Media and Communications.

He is Co-Director of the Communications and Media Research institute (CAMRI), ranked no. 4 for media and communications research in the Research Excellence Framework, which assesses the quality of research in all UK universities, in 2014. It was ranked no. 1 in the previous Research Assessment Exercise, in 2008.

How have David Gauntlett been connected to the start of ‘we media’ either as a user, commentator and theorist?

David Gauntlett has been connected to the start of ‘we media’ as a theorist and commentator, as he argues today media fails to define the categories of ‘audiences’ and ‘producers’, as consumers are becoming producers and producers are becoming consumers.

In addition to, David Gaunntlett states that because of web 2.0, we as audiencescan become our own producers thanks to websites such as YouTube. Through this we can create our own identity and even influence other peoples.

'Online digital media enables everyday people to create and share material, and to be inspired by that made by others.' (From Gauntlett's

new book, 'Making Media Studies', 2014)

'"Production", "audiences" and "texts" has all fallen apart... People still make stuff, and people still look at stuff, but often they are the same

people doing both.' (From Gauntlett's new book, 'Making Media Studies', 2014)

• Actor – Live Earth

• Co-founder and chairman - Generation Investment Management

• Senior partner - Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

• Member of Apple, Inc.'s board of directors

• Gore spends the majority of his time as chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a non-profit devoted to solving the climate crisis

• Author - Earth in the Balance, An Inconvenient Truth, The Assault on Reason, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, and most recently, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change.

• He is the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary and is the co-recipient, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for "informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change.“

• Father - Karenna Gore Schiff, Kristin Gore, Sarah Gore, Al Gore III