Dr Tim Highfield
This person does not currently hold a position at QUT.
Biography
Dr Tim Highfield is Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellow in the QUT Digital Media Research Centre, where his fellowship project is Visual Cultures of Social Media. He is the author of Social Media and Everyday Politics (Polity, 2016), which brings together his PhD and postdoctoral research into politics, popular culture, digital and social media, play and irreverence, activism, and Eurovision.His research examines how the everyday and the digital, the popular and the political, the silly and the serious are interlinked; his interests include the everyday practices of popular social media, and how formats and styles from animated GIFs to humorous hashtags and joke forms are used to engage with topics ranging from the explicitly political to the mundane and personal.
His research covers diverse topics and platforms, from visual social media such as GIFs and emoji, parody accounts and jokes on Twitter, fandom, identity on Instagram (including in collaboration with Dr Tama Leaver at Curtin University), online news and political commentary from blogs to everyday social media (including through hashtags and wordplay and through the visual), and social movements' use of digital technologies in the US and Greece (with Dr Sky Croeser at Curtin University).
In 2017, he was the coordinator of the first DMRC Summer School, which saw 37 PhD and early-career researchers from 11 countries come to QUT for a week of intensive workshops and sessions led by DMRC researchers. He is also part of three of the four programs in the DMRC: Journalism, public communication and democracy; Digital media in everyday life; and Digital methods, where his work with Dr Leaver on Instagrammatics and researching visual social media more broadly a leading contribution to this field.
Dr Highfield is a member of the Association of Internet Researchers, International Communication Association, and Society for Cinema and Media Studies, and a program committee member for the Social Media and Society conference. More information about his work can be found at http://timhighfield.net or on Twitter (@timhighfield).
Personal details
Discipline
Communication and Media Studies
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2008
Qualifications
- PhD (Queensland University of Technology)
- B. Arts (Communication Studies and French) (Hons) (University of Western Australia)
Professional memberships and associations
For more information: timhighfield.net
Association of Internet Researchers Research network "Electronic Democracy" (DEL)
Association of Internet Researchers Research network "Electronic Democracy" (DEL)
Teaching
as Sessional Tutor:
Online (Open Universities Australia - through Curtin University):
WEB101 Web Communications - June 2013-August 2013
NET308 Internet Collaboration and Organisation (acting unit co-ordinator) - December 2011-February 2012; Dec 2012-Feb 2013
MED104 Engaging Media - August 2011-November 2011; March 2012-June 2012
NET102 The Internet and Everyday Life - March 2012-June 2012
On-campus (Curtin):
Web101 Web Communications - March 2013-June 2013
On-campus (QUT):
KCB102 Media Mythbusting - March 2010-June 2010
Online (Open Universities Australia - through Curtin University):
WEB101 Web Communications - June 2013-August 2013
NET308 Internet Collaboration and Organisation (acting unit co-ordinator) - December 2011-February 2012; Dec 2012-Feb 2013
MED104 Engaging Media - August 2011-November 2011; March 2012-June 2012
NET102 The Internet and Everyday Life - March 2012-June 2012
On-campus (Curtin):
Web101 Web Communications - March 2013-June 2013
On-campus (QUT):
KCB102 Media Mythbusting - March 2010-June 2010
Selected publications
- Highfield T, (2016) Social media and everyday politics, Polity Press.
- Highfield T, Leaver T, (2016) Instagrammatics and digital methods: studying visual social media, from selfies and GIFs to memes and emoji, Communication Research and Practice, 2 (1), pp. 47-62.
- Croeser S, Highfield T, (2015) Mapping movements - social movement research and big data: Critiques and alternatives. In G Elmer, J Redden & G Langlois, Compromised data: From social media to big data, Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 173-201.
- Highfield T, Leaver T, (2015) A methodology for mapping Instagram hashtags, First Monday, 20 (1), pp. 1-11.
- Highfield T, (2016) News via Voldemort: Parody accounts in topical discussions on Twitter, New Media and Society, 18 (9), pp. 2028-2045.
- Highfield T, (2015) Tweeted joke life spans and appropriated punch lines: Practices around topical humor on social media, International Journal of Communication, 9, pp. 2713-2734.
- Bruns A, Burgess J, Highfield T, (2014) A 'big data' approach to mapping the Australian twittersphere. In K Bode & P Arthur, Advancing digital humanities: Research, methods, theories, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 113-129.
- Croeser S, Highfield T, (2014) Occupy Oakland and #oo: Uses of Twitter within the Occupy movement, First Monday, 19 (3), pp. 1-13.
- Highfield T, Harrington S, Bruns A, (2013) Twitter as a technology for audiencing and fandom: The Eurovision phenomenon, Information, Communication and Society, 16 (3), pp. 315-339.
- Bruns A, Highfield T, (2012) Blogs, Twitter, and breaking news: The produsage of citizen journalism. In RA Lind, Produsing Theory in a Digital World: The Intersection of Audiences and Production in Contemporary Theory [Volume 80: Digital Formations], Peter Lang Publishing, pp. 15-32.
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Tim, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).