Ego-Media is five-year project funded by the European Research Council to assess the impact of digital and social media upon the practices and experiences of life writing and related modes of ego narrative.
It uses a combination of life writing theory and new media theory (including the notion of the networked self), participant observation of blogs, vlogs, social media and emergent sites, and interviews and discussions with selected online users.
Find out moreOur Current Projects
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Imaginative Agency: Representation and Online Selves
My research explores some theoretical concepts that connect different kinds of new media, and their relations to and evolutions from traditional forms.
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Life-writing of the moment: The sharing and updating self on social media
This project allows me to consider ways in which to build upon and further systematize for the analysis of social media small stories research, a paradigm for narrative & identities analysis for everyday life storytelling.
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Avatars, Alter Egos and Ventriloquists’ Dummies: Voice and Vicariousness Online
How is the Internet changing our understanding of the voice, and of the relationship between speech and identity? This project looks at how we communicate, construct identities and circulate biographical narratives in the era of podcasting, video streams, Skype and Siri.
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The impact of new media on people with epilepsy
This project will study a group of patients with epilepsy, a chronic condition with profound social and biographical implications, and their use of social media and the digital environment more broadly.
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Ego-media Theory and Ethnography: Surveying Research and Tracking User Practices
This portion of “Ego-Media” is dedicated to designing an ethnographic study of online identity practices.
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Talking Interfaces: Literature & Conversational Media
I examine how writers and literary critics have since mid century, drawn on conceptions of, and advances in, Cybernetics, programming, AI, language processing, and lately the area of Human Computer Interaction in their work.
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The Use of Self-Tracking Technologies and Social Media in Self-Representations and Management of Health
Through ethnographic research, this project explores how digital health technology and converged social media (Facebook and Instagram), impacts and influences upon self-representations, autobiographical narratives, and health practices, both on and offline.
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Narrating (m)others’ lives: A narrative interactional analysis of storytelling practices related to YouTube vlogging
In my project I conduct a narrative analysis of vlogs based on a conceptualisation of storytelling as a fundamentally dialogic and situated activity.
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Identity affordances of online social platforms
I aim to investigate how affordances shape our online self-presentations on social networks. The role of the software in how we use online social platforms such as Facebook is currently not well understood.
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Representations of living with HIV in contemporary South African writings
My project examines how HIV/AIDS, as a socio-cultural as well as medical phenomenon, is represented in a variety of contemporary South African textual cultures.
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Imagining the future
Max’s research for Ego-Media looks at how digitally-enabled self-presentation has altered our sense of life and life-narratives, and the implications of these changes for us as human subjects and social beings.
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Dear Diary
Drawing on the ‘Dear Diary‘ exhibition, curated by Professor Clare Brant and Dr Polly North, which ran in the InigoRead more
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Life Online Today and Tomorrow
A curated collection of videos and podcasts of a series of invited lectures and debates with high-impact experts. These coverRead more
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Life and War Writing, Off and Online
This project considers how digital platforms are (and are not) changing the way authors writing about war construct and disseminateRead more
Latest News
Ego-Media in Beijing and Chengdu
Ego-Media colleagues recently traveled to present research from the ERC-funded project to colleagues at the World Auto/Biography Centre at Peking University in Beijing, and at the ‘Literary Biography and Others’ Conference hosted by the Biographical Society at Sichuan University in Chengdu. Members of the team traveled first to Beijing to
Dr Rachael Kent on BBC World News
Dr Rachael Kent recently spoke to BBC World News about how Facebook users assess its value as a social media platform.
Dear Diary: A Celebration of Diaries and their Digital Descendants
Ego-Media’s Professor Clare Brant, and Dr Polly North have curated a major multi-media exhibition that celebrates diaries and the many ways in which diarists capture human experience. ‘Dear Diary: A Celebration of Diaries and their Digital Descendants‘ considers how diaries stage important issues for the individual and society, including those of identity, intimacy,