Making (internet) space for the ‘opposition playground’ in Malaysia Some of my thoughts on Malaysia for a special issue on Authoritarianism in the Digital Age in Dialogues on Digital Society journal was published yesterday! journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

10 years ago today I moved back to the UK. Lots have happened for me since - dad passing, a book published, PhD completed, permanent job, flat in London. Don’t know what the future holds for me (and the world at large) but tonight, I’ll pop open a beer and just be grateful for my charmed life.

Genuine question: what have all the US TikTokkers done with their Little Red Book (RedNote) accounts?

I really should come on here more than just reposting work stuff 🤣 I forget what I used to do on Twitter last time 😬

I'm very excited and proud that my dept @kingsdh.bsky.social is hosting this major conference in 2026. There are many streams of DH, some old, some new, and I've always believed that the future of the field is dialogue between them. This landmark event will do that www.kcl.ac.uk/events/digit...

📢 We’re hiring a Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture Education (Academic Education Pathway)! 📅 Start date: 29 September 2025 (or soon after) 📔 Contract: Full-time, fixed term until 30 September 2026 🗓 Apply by: 27 August 2025 Full details here: my.corehr.com/pls/kclrecru... #AcademicJobs

📢 We’re hiring a Lecturer in Computational Humanities Education (Academic Education Pathway). 📔 Contract: Full-time, indefinite contract 🗓 Apply by: 25 August 2025 Full details here: my.corehr.com/pls/kclrecru... #DigitalHumanities #AcademicJobs #Hiring

Come work (with me) at @kingsdh! Hiring one open-ended role - Lecturer in Computational Humanities my.corehr.com/pls/kclrecru... - and one fixed-term contract role - Lecturer in Digital Media and Culture my.corehr.com/pls/kclrecru... Deadlines in a couple of weeks!

TFW you’re in the mood to code some interviews and your Nvivo license has expired and the one on your institution’s software centre hasn’t been updated either so you opened an IT ticket and spend the day refreshing your email hoping someone will reply soon. 😩

Working on it!

Panel today got me thinking: we 🇲🇾-ns collectively don’t appreciate our own greats/experts. Especially in the Arts - and moreso when these pieces are used to force us to confront the most uncomfortable parts of ourselves. Here’s to more discourse of Jit’s works in academia. @nikicheong.bsky.social

Tomorrow morning! No Jit? A roundtable discussion about Jit Murad's place in academic discourse, hosted by me and featuring an amazing panel. More info in images attached. Date: 12 July 2025 (Saturday) Time: 10.30am Location: ASWARA Free entry but register at www.cloudjoi.com/shows/3710-n...

Folks in Kuala Lumpur this weekend - I'm hosting a roundtable discussion on Jit Murad's place in academic discourse, as part of #JitFest25. Come join the discussion with Susan Philip, Ann Lee, Fasyali Fadzly and Kam Raslan! Free entry, but please register here: www.cloudjoi.com/shows/3710-n...

We're smashing into Pride 2025 with a gang of radical queer writers and a brand new book: #WrathMonth We're channeling our fury into a new collection of biting, blood-splattered stories at the cutting edge of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. 💙📚🪐📚🌈📚🌈🚀💫

Vaguepost because superstitious but today I felt like I achieve something significant in my academic life that (to me) feels like a massive milestone. 😬 Also trepidatious. 🫣

I'm not crying you're crying.

A letter to the editor of the @economist.com We need good news to remind us of what’s possible!

Really thrilled to be at a conference where academics think it’s a good idea to wear red caps which reads: Make Tech Fun Again 🤦‍♂️

20 FELLOWSHIPS! Great opportunities in AI at King's, and to work with the amazing @drkatedevlin.bsky.social (and maybe by extension, me, by virtue of being in the same institution? Am less amazing though so maybe that's not a selling point 😆)!

Boosting this ahead of Friday's talk. See you in SOAS if you're in London, or online via Zoom!

Master's scholarship at King's College London for Black, Asian and minority home students! My faculty (Arts & Humanities) is offering three postgraduate taught programmes scholarships (fees) - closing day is 14 May. Details here: www.kcl.ac.uk/study-legacy...

📣 Launching our Wicked study today - please repost / spread the word! We’re looking to hear from UK-based Women of Colour who have watched the film Wicked for a super quick (15mins tops) study ✨🪄🧹 brightonpsychology.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Come listen to scholars discuss media and digital cuture in Southeast Asia! I'll be speaking at the 3rd editor of the SOAS South East Asia Seminar Series on 28 March at 4pm GMT (online and at Senate House in London). Details in the image below - register here: www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/...

Remember the days when we used to come on social media to announce that Whatsapp is down? Oh wait ...

🎭 How is bias reproduced in text-to-image generative AI models? Join Dr. Stephanie Diepeveen for a public talk on Power, Representation & GenAI. 📅 26 February | 5PM 📍 King’s College London | Free event 🔗 Sign up: www.tickettailor.com/events/digit... #AI #GenerativeAI #digitalmedia

📢 Happening today! Excited to see our colleague Dr Zeena Feldman speak on Social Media and Drag Culture at the Barbican Centre #DigitalMedia #digitalculture

All the people hating on Kendrick Lamar's halftime show claiming they couldn't understand a damn word he was saying probably would say the same thing about my Chinese name no matter how many times or how slow I repeat it for them.

My good friend @emhumps.bsky.social brilliantly named project Your Wrong is crowdsourcing examples of language rules and judgements in popular culture material. Help her out if anything comes to mind! yourwrong.co.uk

Thriv­ing uni­versity spin­outs must not be an Oxbridge pre­serve @lborouniversity.bsky.social VC and leaders from other world-class member universities of @midlandsinnovation.bsky.social share their concerns about the Oxbridge growth corridor via @financialtimes.com www.ft.com/content/c92a...

Folks in Klang Valley, I'm looking for a few more participants for my research on WhatsApp. If you were born on or before 1964, I'd like to speak to you. Please get in touch. More info here: www.nikicheong.com/whatsapp/ Please spread the word! Can be flexible with dates :)

Now that US TikTok might be 'saved' ... my friend said that this saga is more exciting than a wrestling storyline. Very apt analogy for political propaganda - in Malaysia, we call it wayang or shadow puppetry. In the UK, it's known as the dead-cat strategy. What is this saga meant to deflect from?

In all seriousness: the last 2 weeks of TikTok posturing and Zuck grovelling, combined with the X insanity of the last year, should show you that an app with a feed that you don’t control serves *other people’s interests* - not yours.

As the US TikTok 'ban' comes into effect (or rather, Tiktok going dark themselves ...), here is a recording of an interview I did last week with @bfmradio.bsky.social about US users moving to other Chinese social media such as Xiaohongshu - or Little Red Book www.bfm.my/content/podc...

I almost wish I wasn't thinking of giving up my critical Social Media module next year, just so I can get my students to dissect this US "Tik Tok ban" as part of the week I usually do on platform death. Almost.

Meta is making a very strong, very rapid, very convincing argument that no one should be using any Meta platform or product anymore.

This is both an incredibly niche thing but I think it should be more of a thing. Caffè Nero subscribes to the British Newspaper Archive so it’s all free on their wifi. There. I said it.

Research leave be researching! Just completed a week of fieldwork in Singapore - fascinating interviews with "Baby Boomers" about Whatsapp and smartphone use! Malaysia interviews start next week. And in 20 minutes, will go live on @bfmradio.bsky.social to talk about TikTok in the US. Busy is busy!

A short personal reflection of my 2024 … on a blog?! www.bangsarboy.com

Weirdly, after having moved into my flat two weekends ago, today might be the actual first day I’ve done a from work to train home walk. It felt strangely unfamiliar 😅

It’s a dark day for research in Aotearoa New Zealand and the ramifications for the country are huge. Minister Judith Collins has just announced our blue-skies funder will no longer fund humanities & social science research and that 50% of what is funded must have economic benefit.

We're pleased to announce the launch of KingsCAT 🐱, a new @4cat.nl instance to support social media research at King's created by @digitalmethods.net @oilab.bsky.social hosted by @kingsdh.bsky.social @digitalculturekcl.bsky.social @kingsartshums.bsky.social www.kcl.ac.uk/news/gather-... 🎊✨

More than 3/4 of UK universities have pledged to exclude fossil fuel companies from their investment portfolios, according to campaigners.

Great chat with @parismarx.com on digital sovereignty, data centres and activism in Latin America. Thanks, @techwontsave.us!

Around the world, communities are pushing back against data centers. One of the most notable campaigns happened in Cerrillos, Chile. Up next in our premium interviews from DATA VAMPIRES is @slehuede.bsky.social! Become a Patreon supporter to listen: www.patreon.com/posts/116662...

1/ With more users joining Bluesky, we know how important it is to identify which accounts are real. Users deserve confidence that the accounts they interact with are authentic. Sharing some details about our impersonation policy 🧵

Women in Academia — “The academic structure ... with its relentless relocations, temporary contracts, and focus on individual achievement, makes planning for a family feel like an impossible luxury.”

A few days late but it’s been an intense few days with moving but I’m finally living in London again. I’ll miss Birmingham but very glad to leave that regular long commutes behind.

The thing that keeps getting me about all the pieces fretting about Bluesky being too insular is that the argument seems to be that those of us who are most likely to be abused by the right (BIPOC people, trans people, queer people, etc) must put up with being abused for the sake of public discourse

New paper just out: "London's Strand: From Pedestrianisation to Humanisation", with my wonderful colleague Cristina Kiminami. We frame the pedestrianisation of the Strand in London in terms of the creation of intangible "taskscapes": eurogeojournal.eu/index.php/eg....

My book, Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge, is out today from @ucpress.bsky.social! It’s a book about the politics of digital technologies and why they matter, for social justice activists and for all of us. Order it here: www.ucpress.edu/books/approp...