I research how emotions, humour, and crisis are expressed and governed in digital spaces, with a focus on grief, war, disinformation, and algorithmic cultures.
I am Associate Professor of Sociology at Umeå University, Sweden. My research explores how emotions, humour, and crisis are expressed, negotiated, and governed in digital spaces. I have published widely on social media discourses of trauma, grief, and resilience, with recent work focusing on digital death cultures and platformed grief on TikTok, including studies of humour, mourning, and algorithmic amplification.
My current projects examine platform governance and information flows during war and societal crises, as well as the ethics of visual and ethnographic research online. I am also interested in how AI and algorithmic systems shape communication in minority language contexts.
Mine and Tom Divon's forthcoming book, War Influencers: Platformed Witnessing and the Politics of Attention (University of California Press, 2027), explores how war and conflict are mediated through social media, and how witnessing, attention, and emotion become platformed within contemporary information ecologies.
I was the recipient of the Umeå Municipality Scientific Prize in 2025. My research has been widely covered in the media—find a summary of my public outreach here.
I hold a PhD in Sociology from Umeå University, Sweden, and have been awarded docentship in Sociology. I am head of the board of DIGSUM, the Centre for Digital Social Research at Umeå University. I also serve as editor for the Journal of Digital Social Research (JDSR).
I teach theory, methods and research-specific courses at Umeå’s Sociology, Criminology and Library and Information Science (BA levels). I also teach PhD students taking methods courses at Digsum and faculty-wide courses in ethics. I also supervise students writing their BA and MA, and PhD theses.
