As autumn unfolds and the academic year reaches full pace, MSMC continues to welcome a number of early-career researchers visiting our Department. Each of them brings new perspectives, methodological contributions, and opportunities for thoughtful scholarly exchange, enriching the conversations that animate our community.
In this spirit, our Midweek Conversations series for November hosted Alice Junman, a doctoral candidate from Uppsala University (Sweden), currently spending two months in Milan as a visiting student within the SOMET programme.
Her research examines the evolving relationship between social media influencers and the political field — a theme closely aligned with MSMC’s ongoing interest in platform dynamics, digital publics, and contemporary political communication..
The Intersection Between Influencer Culture and the Political Field in Sweden
Alice Junman – Uppsala University
This dissertation explores, focusing on three different expressions of influencer politics. First, I study how influencers participate in political discourse in their content production and personal branding. Second, I analyze how the political field appropriates strategies and symbols of influencer culture in their political communication and branding. Third, I focus on how two worlds are increasingly converging through content collaborations between influencers and politicians. The project uses a mix of qualitative methods, including interviews, ethnography, and analysis of digital content. The analysis focus on the tensions between the values and practices of these distinct worlds, and the work people do to relieve these tensions and make the convergence culturally possible and legitimate. The project gives insight into how values and practices within, on the one hand, a very established and organized field (politics) and, on the other, a new, not yet solidified field (influencers), are negotiated, constructed or challenged when they increasingly converge.
