This week we talk about big tech’s trip to the Congressional Hearings and the ongoing struggle to regulate tech. We’re also joined by Dr Crystal Abidin to unpack the phenomenon of Influencer Wars, and why we should generally be taking influencers more seriously.

Dr Crystal Abidin, Senior Research Fellow and ARC DECRA Fellow at Curtin University. Twitter, Website.

This was a chat about Crystal’s upcoming chapter “L8r H8r: Commoditized Privacy, Influencer Wars, and Productive Disorder in the Influencer Industry”. Check out the pre-print here.

For further reading:

Abidin, Crystal, and Mart Ots. 2016. “Influencers Tell All? Unravelling Authenticity and Credibility in a Brand Scandal.” Pp. 153-161 in Blurring the Lines: Market-driven and Democracy-driven Freedom of Expression, edited by Maria Edström, Andrew T Kenyon, and Eva-Maria Svensson. Göteborg: Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research. <pdf | Open Access book | Purchase book>

Abidin, Crystal. 2016. “Sorry not sorry: Influencers, shamelebrity, and para-apologetic transgressions.” Selected Papers of Internet Research 17: The 17th Annual Meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers. <Open Access>

Abidin, Crystal. 2018. “Public Shaming, Peer Surveillance, and the Profitability of Internet Drama.” Mynah Magazine #2, pp. 62-75, January 2018. <Excerpt | Buy | Read>