I am currently a Research Fellow at the Department of Media and Communiaction (IMK), University of Oslo. I study social software, and the power of algorithms, and my research interests lie in the intersection of software studies, STS and new media theory. I am currently teaching classes on social media and project design, both at the master and bachelor level. Previsouly I have been a Visting Scholar at the Department of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University (sponsored by Alex Galloway), and a Visiting Researcher at the Infoscape Research Lab, Ryerson University (invited by Greg Elmer and Ganaele Langlois).
I recently successfully defended my PhD thesis entitled Programmed Sociality: A Software Studies Perspective on Social Networking Sites. My PhD thesis concerns the ways in which social media platforms have become central forces in the construction of sociality, developing an understand of how social networking software mediate and govern practices of everyday life. Specifically, I’ve been looking at the ways in which the Facebook platform manages and produces the conditions for sociality through forms of algorithmic regulation and infrastructural structuration. My work was supervised by Anders Fagerjord and Geert Lovink, and the evaluation committee includes Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Matthew Fuller and Gunnar Liestøl.
My research focuses on software criticism and the micro-politics of power that code and algorithms install in the context of social media. In my dissertation I make the claim that social networking software enact “programmed sociality.” That is, they prescribe norms and gather actors (human and non-human) into specific forms of collective association shaped around the pursuit of participation. Theoretically and conceptually my disseration draws from recent work in software studies, medium-focused media studies, and Foucauldian analyses of power. Through several interrelated case studies of Facebook’s Open Graph protocol, EdgeRank algorithm, and the Twitter APIs, the dissertation produces a concrete account of how software can be studied as a key component to social life online.
I hold an MSc in Culture & Society from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a BA in Culture and Communication from the University of Oslo and Art History from Lund University. Before proceeding with PhD studies, I worked as a research assistant in the Digital Media Group at the National Institute for Consumer Research (SIFO) and as a researcher on different digital media projects in the Department of Media and Communication.
