Had the honour of sharing some of my work at the Media Management and Transformation Centre (MMTC) at Jonkoping International Business School (JIBS) a fortnight ago thanks to the amazing Sara Ekberg. The campus was gorgeous and my childhood love for Sweden (I was last there at age 12!) keeps growing.

I presented a variant of my CSAA14 Intermezzo paper from April this year. Abstract below. Publication pending (this is all very exciting for me!)

#sexbait: Sex-selling and Selling Sex among Commercial Lifestyle Bloggers in Singapore 

In the Commercial Lifestyle Blog industry where personal lives are narrative vehicles for conveying information, some bloggers have innovatively engaged in various degrees of sensuousness to market campaigns, sell products, and lure traffic to their social media platforms. They are young, clout rich, and Internet famous with an influence over generations of young Singaporeans who rely on social media for firsthand information. Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted with these bloggers and the long-term observation of social media enterprises, this paper examines the treatment of sexual literacies among young men and women lifestyle bloggers in Singapore. A close analysis reveals some scripts appropriated by bloggers to disseminate personal and endorsed sex education such as shock and allure, pedantic consumption, and personal illustrations.

PS: The amazing view from Sara’s office. Fingers crossed I’ll be back next year :) Special thanks to Barbara for being logistical superwoman + standup comedian for the night. I love you, Ekberg.