Science, Technology, and Society Seminar: STS Circle at Harvard (Hybrid)
Date and Time
Location
"Mediated Animal-human Relations"
Speaker:
Natalie Ngai, Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication, Boston College.
Contact:
Laura Flynn
lauraflynn@hks.harvard.edu
Chair:
Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies; Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy, Committee on Degrees in Environmental Science and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
Attendance Information:
- Please register online to attend this event in person at CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Thomas Chan-Soo Kang Room (S050).
- Please sign up to attend this event via Zoom
Abstract:
Pet influencers are rising stars on social media, and many everyday social media users also curate profiles for animals, like pets, for fun. This study established a cat Instagram account and uses ethnographic methods to investigate the phenomenon of pet Instagram as a kind of affective community co-habited by humans and nonhuman others. In media and communication studies, literature on micro-celebrity has emphasized the practice of micro-celebrity – engaging in self-promotion and addressing followers as fans – as a calculating self-presentation strategy used by many successful influencers to update their status. This ethnography disputes this argument and reaffirms that the micro-celebrity is an ordinary, somewhat pleasurable experience for everyday social media users. This case study shows that the animal-human assemblages on social media as teamwork can affectively, productively, and playfully reaffirm how the self is always part of and constituted by multiple others, including nonhuman animal others.
Bio:
Natalie Ngai is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication at Boston College. She is working on a book manuscript that examines the affective and ideological work of cuteness in the media and material culture during global financial crises. Her work disputes the notion that cuteness is frivolous, self-indulgent, and anti-feminist. Ngai has published research articles in various academic journals, such as Media, Culture & Society and Feminist Media Studies. Her works have received several research and writing awards from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and the British Association of Film, Television, and Screen Studies.