I am the Programme Lead of ‘Social Media Pop Cultures’ at the Centre for Culture and Technology (CCAT), Curtin University, founded in January 2021.

The Social Media Pop Cultures Programme is CCAT’s newest node, dedicated to critically assessing the history, function, and design of popular culture in social media spaces and pop culture vernacular native to social media, and to scrutinize academic approaches to the phenomenon, paying special attention to digital media in the Asia Pacific region.

This Programme focuses on:

(1) how popular culture theories, logics, structures, and industries have mapped onto social media spaces;

(2) how the ubiquity of social media sensibilities, systems, practices, and trends have impacted pop cultures around the world;

(3) as well as how social media pop culture artefacts (such as memes, folklore, chain mail, viral videos, internet celebrities, and influencers), and in various formats (such as texts, images, gifs, and videos) allow for a layer of plausible deniability wherein users can disperse and dispel organised efforts as mere entertainment or humour, in an act of subversive frivolity.

The Programme comprises a network of scholars including Curtin University Research Associates, CCAT Research Associates, Visiting Scholars, Visiting HDR Students, and Ad hoc interns.

To find out more, visit:
Social Media Pop Cultures >>
Centre for Culture and Technology >>

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This page was last updated on 11 March 2022.