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Project Deep Dive: Sal Hagen
27th March 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM GMT
‘Who is /ourguy/?’: Tracing memes to study online subcultures
In fast-paced attention economies, Internet memes and catchphrases that manage to ‘stick’ have arguably come to form anchor points in rapidly changing discourse: from discussions on ‘wokeness,’ clashes between ‘boomers’ and ‘zoomers,’ to catchphrase-laden conspiracy theories. This talk discusses how we may repurpose these objects as nodal points for research into online subcultures. In specific, I discuss several case studies of where I follow how memetic phrases proliferate on and around the far-right 4chan/pol/ forum, an infamous space that has been at the root of many political memes. I outline how these methods may reconfigure our ideas memes as objects of study, as well as challenge some assumptions and procedures embedded in digital methods research.
Speaker Biography
![Headshot of Sal Hagen](https://efi.ed.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Sal-Hagen-Headshot.jpg)
Sal Hagen is a researcher affiliated with the Digital Methods Initiative and OILab of the University of Amsterdam. His PhD research concerned the collectivity of radical imageboard groups, which he examined through quali-quantitative, data-driven methods. As part of this, he works on research tools to study online platforms and digital culture, notably through 4CAT (4cat.nl).