Hello from snowy Jönköping where the views are dreamy even if I am secretly freezing my butt off in the -13*C cold. These days when I walk home from campus, I hum Christmas tunes to myself because it feels cozy.

March is going to be a marathon of speaking events, between my ongoing fieldwork in various parts of Sweden. If you happen to be in town, it would be great to catch you:

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I will be sharing provocations on the value of internet folklore at the Writing the Internet: Internet Lore in Asia workshop organized by the Asia Research Institute on 8-9 March 2018. My talk “Networked capillaries of vigilante activism on the Singaporean internet” examines the physical materialities, capillaries, profitability, and authorship of internet folklore in Singapore.

“This paper draws upon in-depth digital ethnography to interrogate the generations and genealogies of vigilante activism on the Singapore internet, in relation to the obscurity and spectacle of internet folklore. By tracing the trajectory key websites, forums, and social media pages that constitute networked capillaries of call-out culture and public shaming, as well as their dominant cultures among users in the community, the paper positions cultures of vigilante activism as an in-route for understanding the relationship between state and peer surveillance, national law and internet mores, and commercial authorship and charismatic ownership in Singapore. I use ‘internet folklore’ as a shorthand for the authorial account of events, pieced together by squillions of pseudonymous internet users, who in each incident assess personal morality and assign public blame based on populism in the public court of social media commentary.”

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I will be giving a keynote at the Brand Experience Through New Media event organized by Aalto University & Vaasa University on 15 March 2018. My talk “Cultures of internet celebrity on YouTube” will be based on my forthcoming book Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online that is an introductory text for the general public. The event is free, but please register for catering purposes.

“Welcome to Aalto University Experience Platform’s event on new brand experiences. YouTube and other digital platforms have changed both how we interact with brands and what is considered as a desirable career path. Changing business logics push companies to create meaningful connections with their customers, while globally there is a growing number of people who want to become generational influencers through such platforms as YouTube. But what does this all mean for brand owners and organizations? Why should you care about the rising importance of YouTube? Welcome to our event to find out more!”

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I will be giving a lunchtime seminar at the MMTC Research Seminar series at my home institute, Jönköping University on 21 March 2018. The talk “From internet celebrities to Influencers” will connect my work on Influencers to the larger phenomenon of internet celebrities.

All are welcome!
1200-1300hrs @ Jönköping International Business School,  Level 6, Room B6046.

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Finally, I am super excited to be giving a workshop with my supremely intelligent collaborators Maria-Carolina Cambre (Concordia University) and Katie Warfield (Kwantlen Polytechnic University) at Photomedia 2018, 26-28 March 2018. Our workshop “What do methods let us see? Epistemologies of Photographic Methods” is a hands-on session that invites participants to interrogate how our methodological choices in examining visual images amplify or obscure epistemological standpoints.

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And that takes me to April 2018 and its set of adventures!