Essena O'Neill’s dramatic rejection of her successful social media channels raises important questions about how advertising and sponsored posts are regulated on social media.
Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose. So said Kevin Arnold in The Wonder Years. Now that we spend so much time online, our digital…
Two of Scotland’s leading politicians illustrate an interesting phenomenon on Twitter. In the wake of the Scottish National Party’s surge in popularity following the independence referendum, Nicola Sturgeon…
Controversial Liverpool striker Mario Balotelli is in hot water. Despite being the victim of online abuse, he has become a perpetrator of racist humour. Earlier in the season, the Italy forward faced a…
Funerals increasingly employ digital media; and a growing body of research addresses the intersection of digital culture and traditional memorialising practices. Commonly-used digital media include PowerPoint…
Rikke Bjerg Jensen, Royal Holloway University of London; Alasdair Pinkerton, Royal Holloway University of London; David Denney, Royal Holloway University of London, and Peter Adey, Royal Holloway University of London
By now, millions of people around the world recognise the face of Alexander Sotkin. This young Russian soldier posted selfies on Instagram that appear to place him in Ukrainian territory over the past…
A couple of months ago my 13-year-old son came to me with a true story. One of his acquaintances had given him control of an Instagram profile with roughly 3,500 followers as a gift. A few days later…
In 1978, the cover of Patti Smith’s album Easter was sufficiently shocking and mystifying to many people that some US record stores, especially in the south, according to Smith, refused to display it…
For researchers, social media is a veritable goldmine of opportunity. Every day, reams and reams of naturally occurring data are produced by users of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. At any given moment…
What does 2014 hold for your online life? If you’re young, it probably won’t involve Facebook that much. This year marked the start of what looks likely to be a sustained decline of what had been the most…
We truly live in a digital age. The “selfie”, has been announced by the Oxford English Dictionary as this year’s most popular word and, by me, as this year’s most unremarkable word. This new-found trend…
Instagram’s announcement yesterday of a new set of terms and conditions has elicited a backlash from many of its 100 million users, with many vowing to ditch the service before the changes take effect…
With #PillarofDefense, Israel this week launched the world’s first-ever hashtag-driven social media military offensive in Gaza Strip, followed by action on the ground. In direct response, the defensively-worded…
Professor Digital Culture, Business and Computing at Durham University Business School and Advanced Research Computing (ARC), Durham University, Durham University