From an academic perspective, I have a strong interest in activism and media, both digital and physical, offline and online. As a social scientist, I find it fascinating how media can transform personal lives into public matters. This fascination has been one of the key elements in both of my theses, albeit approached through different thematic angles.
Smeding, J. (2021) “The Politics of Intimate Images: On Mobilizing a Collective through Intimate Visual Culture” 1-22.
For my bachalor in Cultural Anthropology I wrote my thesis on the interconnection between activism, intimate lives and public media. I aimed to obtain a broader understanding of intimate images within public spaces in order to illustrate how they can facilitate social connection and therefore, how the intimate realm can become publicly meaningful within the context of political movements.
Smeding, J. (2023) “Cultures of Digital Self-Diagnosis: Exploring the Rise of Mental Health Care Content on User Generated Social Media Platforms” 1-40.
Which socio-cultural aspects have driven the rise in self-help and diagnostic mental health care content on user-generated social media platforms, such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube? This qualitative thesis research aimed to understand how neurodivergent groups make meaning of their (self-)diagnostic journey, which perils and joys they encountered, and what we as a society can learn from the rising need for digitalized peer communities.
