The 2023 AoIR Student Paper Award has been awarded to Nermin Elsherif for her paper “The Not-so-revolutionary Facebook: Nostalgia and the return to a centralized state.”
Specifically, we selected this paper because of the author’s use of multi-year ethnographic research involving largely men in their 60s to examine the use of Facebook to promote nostalgia for an imagined utopian past following the 2011 revolution. This allows her to push back against western-centric scholarship that has largely focused on the “modernizing” potential of digital technologies in postcolonial contexts and digital media studies focus on youth.
You will be able to hear Nermin’s paper in Philadelphia on Friday 20 October at 8:30-10:00 am in the Wyeth Ballroom B.
We would also like to recognize Ran Ju’s paper, “Lifestyle Governmentality in China: Governing the entrepreneurial citizen subjects through lifestyle practices on Xiaohongshu (Red),” with an Honorable Mention.
This paper utilizes multiple methods, including systematic analysis of regulations and guidelines, discourse analysis, a walk-through method, and in-depth interviews with both influencers and users. Using a Foucauldian approach to governmentality and sociological lifestyle studies, the paper examines how the platform Xiaohongshu (Red) “is distinctly tied to a hybrid model of governmentality that combines neoliberal and socialist political reasoning about governance, enterprise, and social welfare.”
You will be able to hear Ran’s paper in Philadelphia on Friday 20 October at 15:30-17:00 pm in the Benton Room.
Congratulations to Nermin and Ran! Be sure to check out their papers at the conference.
