I presented some of my ongoing research in July at the Celebrity Studies Conference in Amsterdam. Microcelebrity and Parenting in Malaysia from Julian Hopkins Abstract Lifestyle blogging has become an established part of the Malaysian internet, and these ‘microcelebrities’ (Senft 2012) develop parasocial relations through the interactive affordances of social media, leveraging authenticity through a carefully […]
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Year: 2016
CURIOSITY casting shadows on the rocks, sand, pebbles and dirt. but is it Earth over which the shadows lengthen through the sol? it’s curious how it’s the same Sun on Mars warming the earth and the rocky plains, with half an hour and seven minutes to spare.
Flashpacking – Travelling with Social Me
Last year I went to Sri Lanka for a short visit. It was the first time I had been travelling by myself since I went to Laos in 2008. When I was much younger, I went backpacking in India and I used to hitchhike quite a lot around Europe. I would go off, and be […]
How to Customise AutoCorrect in Word
Hi, here’s a short video on how to customise AutoCorrect in Word. (The example uses Word 2013, but it should work with all versions of Word, as far as I know.) It’s a very useful way speeding up your typing by storing abbreviations of words and short phrases that you use a lot.
What Will Donald Trump Do?
Well I’ve been following the spectacle of Donald Trump’s campaign with a mixture of fascination and horror, but the New York Post seems to have summed up a cognitive dissonance that I noticed amongst his following. Basically, you get supporters who say: ‘Oh he doesn’t really mean what he’s saying. He’s only doing it to get attention […]
Everyday Use of Social and Mobile Media ...
In Malaysia, broadband internet penetration is measured at 72.2% of households (MCMC 2015a: 3), with 87.1% of internet users reporting using social media (MCMC 2015b). Mobile phone subscriptions are ubiquitous, at 144.2 per 100 inhabitants, with 53.4% of these reporting owning a ‘smartphone’ (MCMC 2014: 6, 29). This means that the majority of Malaysians are able to […]
Microcelebrity and Parenthood in Malaysi...
I have started a new project, which also hopes to follow up from my previous doctoral research into the emergence of lifestyle blogging. One thing that struck me then, was how bloggers described having to adapt to unexpectedly large audiences, and then how they adapted again as they went through different stages in life – […]
Being Offended
Free speech is an instrument of power, which is why it should be available to everyone – without fear of violent retribution. However, should people choose to boycott a newspaper, to criticise it publicly, to call for others to boycott it, pursue them in court for hate speech, etc. that’s fine. The proper response of […]