Crystal Abidin
Crystal Abidin | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Singapore |
| Known for | research on influencers |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Western Australia |
| Thesis | Please subscribe!: influencers, social media, and the commodification of everyday life (2016) |
| Doctoral advisor | Rob Cover, Greg Acciaioli |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | internet research, digital anthropology, ethnography |
| Sub-discipline | vernacular internet cultures |
| Institutions | Curtin University |
Crystal Abidin is a digital anthropologist and ethnographer of vernacular internet cultures. She is a Professor at the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia, where she directs the Influencer Ethnography Research Lab.
Career
Abidin grew up in Singapore, and began studying its influencer industry in 2010. Abidin has been interviewed by media about social media phenomena several hundred times[1] and has been on several media lists of influential young scholars. The Australian included her in a 2021 list of 40 "rising stars" likely to make a mark on research in the next decade.[2] She was named one of the "30 Top Thinkers Under 30" by Pacific Standard om 2016[3] and Forbes named her one of "30 under 30 Asia" in 2018.[4] Cosmopolitan cited her as one of 16 insiders making predictions for 2022.[5]
Abidin is the editor-in-chief of the scholarly journal Media International Australia. Her articles and books have been cited over 10,000 times.
Key concepts
Calibrated amateurism
Crystal Abidin defined calibrated amateurism in a scholarly article about social media influencers: "Calibrated amateurism is a practice and aesthetic in which actors in an attention economy labor specifically over crafting contrived authenticity that portrays the raw aesthetic of an amateur, whether or not they really are amateurs by status or practice, by relying on the performance ecology of appropriate platforms, affordances, tools, cultural vernacular, and social capital."[6]
The term has been taken up and developed by a number of other scholars, to understand the online performance of politicians,[7] fitness influencers[8] and others. Jessica Maddox builds upon it for the idea of "calibrated expertise".[9]
Subversive frivolity
Abidin argues that influencers often use a deliberate strategy she calls subversive frivolity. She first defined the concept in a 2016 article as "the under-visibilized and under-estimated generative power of an object or practice arising from its (populist) discursive framing as marginal, inconsequential, and unproductive".[10] The term has been taken up by scholars of social media, and there are hundreds of papers using the term, for instance analysing Snapchat posts[11] or the political impact of humourous posts.[12]
Books
- Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online (2018)
- Microcelebrity Around the Globe: Approaches to Cultures of Internet Fame (co-editor Brown, 2018)
- Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures (co-authors Leaver & Highfield, 2020)
- Mediated Interfaces: The Body on Social Media (co-editors Warfield & Cambre, 2020)
- tumblr: Curation, Creativity and Community (co-authors Tiidenberg & Hendry, 2022)
- Influencer Marketing: Interdisciplinary and Socio-Cultural Perspectives (co-editors Gurrieri & Drenten, 2025)
Awards and recognition
2022 WA Young Tall Poppy Awards[13]
References
- ^ Abidin, Crystal (2016-03-24). "List of media appearances with links". WISHCRYS. Retrieved 2022-07-27.
- ^ Rowbotham, Jill; Dodd, Tim (2021-11-12). "These 40 young researchers are rising stars, leaders of the future". The Australian.
- ^ Savka, Natalya (2 March 2016). "The 30 Top Thinkers Under 30: Crystal Abidin". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 2022-07-27.
- ^ "Crystal Abidin". Forbes. Retrieved 2022-07-27.
- ^ Goodman, Johanna (2022-07-25). "Celeb Culture Is Mutating and Coming for Us All". Cosmopolitan. Retrieved 2022-07-27.
- ^ Abidin, Crystal (2017-04-01). "#familygoals: Family Influencers, Calibrated Amateurism, and Justifying Young Digital Labor". Social Media + Society. 3 (2) 2056305117707191: 205630511770719. doi:10.1177/2056305117707191. ISSN 2056-3051.
- ^ Arnesson, Johanna; Grandien, Christina (2025-02-01). "Behind-the-scenes of the parliament: Influencer genres and political authenticity on Swedish politicians' YouTube channels". Convergence. 31 (1): 385–401. doi:10.1177/13548565241260486. ISSN 1354-8565.
- ^ Reade, Josie (2021-03-01). "Keeping it raw on the 'gram: Authenticity, relatability and digital intimacy in fitness cultures on Instagram". New Media & Society. 23 (3): 535–553. doi:10.1177/1461444819891699. ISSN 1461-4448.
- ^ Maddox, Jessica (2023-10-26). "Micro-celebrities of information: mapping calibrated expertise and knowledge influencers among social media veterinarians". Information, Communication & Society. 26 (14): 2726–2752. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2022.2109980. ISSN 1369-118X.
- ^ Abidin, Crystal (2016-04-01). ""Aren't These Just Young, Rich Women Doing Vain Things Online?": Influencer Selfies as Subversive Frivolity". Social Media + Society. 2 (2) 2056305116641342. doi:10.1177/2056305116641342. ISSN 2056-3051.
- ^ Aziz, Fatima (2021-03-27). "Shamelessly cute: Understanding gender ambiguous identity performances via "The Desi Bombshell" Snapchat video selfies". First Monday. doi:10.5210/fm.v26i4.11677. ISSN 1396-0466.
- ^ Ringrose, Jessica; Lawrence, Emilie (2018-07-04). "Remixing misandry, manspreading, and dick pics: networked feminist humour on Tumblr". Feminist Media Studies. 18 (4): 686–704. doi:10.1080/14680777.2018.1450351. ISSN 1468-0777.
- ^ Sydoruk, Lauren (2022-07-07). "Four Curtin researchers recognised in 2022 WA Young Tall Poppy Awards - News | Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia". News. Retrieved 2022-07-27.