Martin French

Research Program

As a sociologist, I study the social dimensions of technology with an empirical focus on communications & information technology (CIT). My research emphasizes the broader social and political contexts of CIT, focusing especially on risk, surveillance, privacy, and social justice.

The aim of this research program is to create an evidentiary foundation for understanding the relationship between information flows, the practices that nurture or impede them, and the resulting configurations of governance that they enable or disrupt.

Recent Publications

• French, Martin, Myriam Tardif, Sylvia Kairouz and Annie-Claude Savard (Forthcoming). “A Governmentality of Online Gambling: Quebec’s Contested Internet Gambling Website Blocking Provisions,” Canadian Journal of Law & Society.
• Whitson, Jennifer and Martin French (2021). “Productive Play: The Shift from Responsible Consumption to Responsible Production ,” Journal of Consumer Culture.
• Zanescu, Andrei, Marc Lajeunesse, and Martin French (2021). “Speculating on Steam: Consumption in the Gamblified Platform Ecosystem ,” Journal of Consumer Culture.
• Zanescu, Andrei, Martin French, and Marc Lajeunesse (2020). “Betting on DOTA 2’s Battle Pass: Gamblification and Productivity in Play,” New Media & Society,
• Lynch, Erin, David Howes and Martin French. (2020). “A Touch of Luck and a “Real Taste of Vegas,”: A Sensory Ethnography of the Montreal Casino,” Senses & Society, 15(2): 192-215
• Reynolds, Jennifer, Sylvia Kairouz, Samantha Ilacqua, and Martin French. (2020). “Responsible Gambling: A Scoping Review,” Critical Gambling Studies, 1(1): 23-39
• French, Martin, Fiona A. Miller and Renata Axler (2019). “‘It’s actually part of clinical care’: biobanking in the entrepreneurial hospital,” Technoscienza, 9(2): 133-158.