Dr Tim Highfield
BA (Hons), PhD
Department of Sociological Studies
Lecturer in Digital Media and Society
(He/him)
t.j.highfield@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 6447
+44 114 222 6447
Elmfield Building
Full contact details
Dr Tim Highfield
Department of Sociological Studies
Elmfield Building
Northumberland Road
Sheffield
S10 2TU
Department of Sociological Studies
Elmfield Building
Northumberland Road
Sheffield
S10 2TU
- Profile
-
Tim joined the Department in September 2019 from the University of Amsterdam, where he was Assistant Professor in New Media and Digital Culture (2018-19).
He was previously Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow (2015-18) at Queensland University of Technology, where he also completed his PhD in 2011. Tim is also Secretary for the Visual Communication Studies division of the International Communication Association (2018-2020).
- Research interests
-
Tim's research examines critical cultural implications of social and digital media within everyday life. His work focuses in particular on digital cultures and practices with regards to visual, temporal, and political perspectives.
His current research projects include Digital Time, exploring the temporal interventions and applications of digital platforms, and Visual Cultures of Social Media, examining the role of visual content within everyday social media contexts.
His current collaborative research includes the Australian Research Council-funded project Digital Media, Location Awareness, and the Politics of Geodata (with Peta Mitchell, Larissa Hjorth, Agnieszka Leszczynski, and Paul Dourish; 2018-2020), and the forthcoming book Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures (with Tama Leaver and Crystal Abidin, Polity, 2019).
Research areas
- Digital methods
- Visual social media
- Politics and/of digital media
- Time and digital media
- Everyday digital cultures
- Digital media platforms and their cultural and political interventions
- Publications
-
Books
- Instagram Visual Social Media Cultures. John Wiley & Sons.
- Social Media and Everyday Politics. Polity.
Journal articles
- How to Select Appropriate Online Methodologies.
- Emoji hashtags // hashtag emoji : of platforms, visual affect, and discursive flexibility. First Monday, 23(9). View this article in WRRO
- Automating the digital everyday: an introduction. Media International Australia, 166(1), 6-10.
- Visualising the ends of identity: pre-birth and post-death on Instagram. Information, Communication & Society, 21(1), 30-45.
- Never gonna GIF you up: analyzing the cultural significance of the animated GIF. Social Media + Society, 3(3).
- Mediated geographies of everyday life: Navigating the ambient, augmented, and algorithmic geographies of geomedia. Ctrl-Z: new media philosophy, 7.
- News via Voldemort: Parody accounts in topical discussions on Twitter. New Media & Society, 18(9), 2028-2045.
- Instagrammatics and digital methods: studying visual social media, from selfies and GIFs to memes and emoji. Communication Research and Practice, 2(1), 47-62.
- Harbouring Dissent: Greek Independent and Social Media and the Antifascist Movement. Fibreculture(26), 137-159.
- Tweeted joke life spans and appropriated punch lines: Practices around topical humor on social media. International Journal of Communication, 9(1), 2713-2734.
- The Arab Spring and Social Media Audiences. American Behavioral Scientist, 57(7), 871-898.
- POLITICAL NETWORKS ONTWITTER. Information, Communication & Society, 16(5), 667-691.
- TWITTER AS A TECHNOLOGY FOR AUDIENCING AND FANDOM. Information, Communication & Society, 16(3), 315-339.
- National and state-level politics on social media: Twitter, Australian political discussions, and the online commentariat. International Journal of Electronic Governance, 6(4), 342-342.
- Talking of Many Things: Using Topical Networks to Study Discussions in Social Media. Journal of Technology in Human Services, 30(3-4), 204-218.
- Confrontation and Cooptation: A Brief History of Australian Political Blogs. Media International Australia, 143(1), 89-98.
- Challenges of Tracking Topical Discussion Networks Online. Social Science Computer Review, 29(3), 340-353.
- Mapping the Australian Networked Public Sphere. Social Science Computer Review, 29(3), 277-287.
- A methodology for mapping Instagram hashtags. First Monday.
- Occupy Oakland and #oo: Uses of Twitter within the Occupy movement. First Monday, 19(3).
Chapters
- Visual social media In Hanusch F & Vos T (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies John Wiley & Sons
- Social TV and depictions of community on social media: Instagram and Eurovision fandom In Messaris P & Humphreys L (Ed.), Digital Media: Transformations in Human Communication (pp. 156-165). Peter Lang
- Histories of blogging In Goggin G & McLelland M (Ed.), Routledge Companion to Global Internet Histories (pp. 331-342). Routledge
- May the Best Tweeter Win: The Twitter Strategies of Key Campaign Accounts in the 2012 US Election, Die US-Präsidentschaftswahl 2012 (pp. 425-442). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden
- Is Habermas on Twitter? Social Media and the Public Sphere In Bruns A, Skogerbø E, Christensen C, Larsson AO & Enli G (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics (pp. 56-73). Routledge
- Compulsory voting, encouraged tweeting? Australian elections and social media, The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics (pp. 338-350).
- Mapping Movements: Social media research and big data - Critiques and alternatives In Elmer G, Langlois G & Redden J (Ed.), Compromised data? (pp. 173-201). Bloomsbury
- A ‘Big Data’ Approach to Mapping the Australian Twittersphere In Arthur PL & Bode K (Ed.), Advancing Digital Humanities: Research, Methods, Theories (pp. 113-129). Palgrave Macmillan
- Following the yellow jersey: Tweeting the Tour de France In Weller K, Bruns A, Burgess J, Mahrt M & Puschmann C (Ed.), Twitter and Society (pp. 249-261). Peter Lang
- The Arab Spring and its social media audiences: English and Arabic Twitter users and their networks In McCaughey M (Ed.), Cyberactivism on the participatory web (pp. 86-116). Routledge
- The arab spring on twitter: Language communities in #Egypt and #Libya, Social Media and the Politics of Reportage: The 'Arab Spring' (pp. 33-55).
- Sharing the News: Dissemination of Links to Australian News Sites on Twitter In Gordon J, Rowinski P & Stewart G (Ed.), Br(e)aking the News: Journalism, Politics and New Media (pp. 181-209). Peter Lang
- Blogs, Twitter, and Breaking News: The Produsage of Citizen Journalism In Lind RA (Ed.), Produsing Theory in a Digital World: The Intersection of Audiences and Production (pp. 15-32). Peter Lang
- From news blogs to news on Twitter: gatewatching and collaborative news curation (pp. 325-339). Edward Elgar Publishing
- A âBig Dataâ Approach to Mapping the Australian Twittersphere, Advancing Digital Humanities Palgrave Macmillan
- The Arab Spring on Twitter, Social Media and the Politics of Reportage Palgrave Macmillan
- Blended Data: Critiquing and Complementing Social Media Datasets, Big and Small In Hunsinger J, Klastrup L & Allen MM (Ed.), Second International Handbook of Internet Research Springer
- Instagram Visual Social Media Cultures. John Wiley & Sons.
- Grants
-
- 2018-20 Australian Research Council Discovery grant (DP180100174): Digital Media, Location Awareness and the Politics of Geodata
- 2014-15 Australian Research Council Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grant: TrISMA: Tracking Infrastructure for Social Media Analysis
- Teaching activities
-
- Digital Methods
- Advanced Social Media Research