Influencers, Misinformation, and ‘Under the Radar’ Strategies

Drawing on research from various interconnected projects on influencer cultures and vigilante activism in Singapore and the Asia Pacific between 2011 and 2020, this talk provides a vernacular framework for thinking about the role of social media influencers, their involvement in circuits of (mis)information ecologies, and their innovative ‘under the radar’ strategies of communication, amplification, and suppression.

Dr. Crystal Abidin is a socio-cultural anthropologist of vernacular internet cultures, particularly influencer cultures, online visibility, and social media pop cultures especially in the Asia Pacific. She is Senior Research Fellow & ARC DECRA Fellow in Internet Studies and at the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University, and Affiliate Researcher with the Media Management and Transformation Centre at Jönköping University. Her books include Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online (2018), Microcelebrity Around the Globe: Approaches to Cultures of Internet Fame (co-editor Brown, 2018), Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures (co-authors Leaver & Highfield, 2019), Mediated Interfaces: The Body on Social Media (co-editors Warfield & Cambre, 2020), and tumblr: Curation, Creativity and Community. (co-authors Tiidenberg & Hendry, forthcoming). Crystal was listed on Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia and Pacific Standard 30 Top Thinkers Under 30, and recently received the International Communication Association Popular Communication Early Career Scholar Prize and Isaac Manasseh Meyer Fellowship. Reach her at wishcrys.com.

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