Audiences, Diversity, and Digital Media Cultures

The researchers within this theme are all passionate about exploring how diverse audiences, across age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and political beliefs, engage with the digital world. From social media and streaming platforms to online forums and digital storytelling, we are interested in what people do online and why it matters.

Using interviews, focus groups, digital ethnography, and other hands-on methods, we delve into how digital media influences culture and society, and how culture and society, in turn, shape media use. Our work is grounded in real experiences and voices.

Our expertise spans a wide range of audiences, cultural contexts, and digital media genres. We research topics such as celebrity and social media, children and youth culture, cultural and political citizenship, and digital technology and ageing. Our work also explores fan culture, gender identities and representation, health and illness, humour and satire, and the intersections of media with food, animals, and advertising. We investigate meme cultures, media scandals and gossip, migration and media, mobile and platform-based media, participatory and popular culture, power and political mobilization, screen technologies in family life, sexual violence, and vaccine hesitancy. Through these diverse areas, we uncover how everyday media use shapes – and is shaped by – society and identity.