Norsk medietidsskrift (Published: August 2025) ABSTRACT The Digital Backlash is a rich empirical overview of the ongoing digitalization malaise, which is not going away anytime soon. The ambition to tackle this predicament both in empirical breadth and theoretical depth is a daring one and should find its audience across diverse fields of social science, even […]
International Forum of Psychoanalysis (Published: April 2025) ABSTRACT Among a plethora of books on the subject, few grapple with the social media malaise in as bold yet nuanced a way as does Formative Media. Weaving together a vast array of media research with insiders’ accounts of social media corporate culture, Krüger champions psychoanalytical theories where […]
Journal of Extreme Anthropology (Published: 21st September 2021) ABSTRACT Matthew Flisfeder’s recent contribution to literature on social media within psychoanalysis and critical theory is less a variation on the well-versed theme than an ingeniously crafted statement, deserving the praise and attention both by those within and outside of the field. Tying together Lacanian psychoanalysis, Marxist […]
Continuum (Published: 16th May 2024) ABSTRACT Knowingly re-circulated misinformation online is a widespread phenomenon that is increasingly met with suspicion or even condemnation in spite of the sharer’s intent. The article recasts misinformation sharing into cultural play practice questioning this sensibility. Drawing on Huizinga’s concept of play and the Lacanian notion of belief-through-other, it claims […]
Nordicom Review (Published: 12th Mar 2024) ABSTRACT While small groups leverage disproportionate visibility online, oftentimes resorting to hostile language, the use of social media for political expression by the majority of Norwegian users has been theorised in terms of lurking, inhibition, and self-restraint. Drawing from qualitative in-depth interviews with young adults of different political orientations […]
Communication & Democracy (Published online: 13 Sep 2023) ABSTRACT Once lauded for liberating audiences from their passive state by granting voice, the digital public sphere today increasingly resembles a cacophony of disjointed voices datafied for the gain of giant tech firms. Instead of bemoaning the co-optation of users’ activity, we might find it timely to […]
Cultural Intertexts (10/2020) ABSTRACT Although parallels between Kafka’s hybrid characters and Woody Allen’s Leonard Zelig have been noted in literature studies (Bruce 1998), the underlying interpretative synergy is not exhausted and occasions a revisit, timely in light of the social tensions of the century later present. Juxtaposing counterfactual history with actual highbrow commentary in the […]
