Tim Highfield
Biographic Data
| ID | 245099 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tim Highfield |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tim |
| FAMILY NAME | Highfield |
| SIGNATURE | HIGHFIELD T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queensland University of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1794-146X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 136 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Platformed solidarity: Examining the performative politics of Twitter hashflags
This paper conceptualises platformed solidarity, describing how platforms change their affordances to support particular social justice causes, sometimes temporarily, and often in response to current events. Such actions allow platforms to perform their support of different interests in response to issues such as racial and gender equality or pro-democratic aims, among other examples. In each case, a specific feature of the platform is modified t…
Platform Specificities: The Platform Books Panel
Social media platforms shape our lives on micro, meso and macro levels. They have transformed our everyday practices as individuals, or social practices as small and large groups, and have multiple, entangled impacts on rituals of democracy and cultural (re)production, organization of labor and industry. This panel brings together five papers, each by authors of recently published or forthcoming platform books. Together, the papers offer an analy…
Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures
Emoji hashtags // hashtag emoji: Of platforms, visual affect, and discursive flexibility
This paper examines the communicative functions of emoji in concert with hashtags, comparing two platform-specific approaches to combining hashtags and emoji: emoji hashtags as discursive markers on Instagram, and platform-directed hashtag emoji on Twitter. These approaches offer key insights into the dynamics between the platforms and their users, from user-led practices on Instagram to the commercial partnerships over-riding user intentionality…
Automating the digital everyday: An Introduction
This Special Issue brings together a range of social science and humanities perspectives on the relationships among automation, digital media and everyday life. We have aimed to get beyond the current hype and anxieties around self-driving cars, algorithms and robotics, and to achieve a more precise and grounded understanding of exactly what might be meant by automation, how and with what effects it is becoming entangled with everyday life and ho…
Never Gonna GIF You Up: Analyzing the Cultural Significance of the Animated GIF
The animated Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is a digital file format with a long history within internet cultures and digital content. Emblematic of the early Web, the GIF fell from favor in the late 1990s before experiencing a resurgence that has seen the format become ubiquitous within digital communication. While the GIF has certain technical affordances that make it highly versatile, this is not the sole reason for its ubiquity. Instead, G…
Instagrammatics and digital methods: Studying visual social media, from selfies and GIFs to memes and emoji
Visual content is a critical component of everyday social media, on platforms explicitly framed around the visual (Instagram and Vine), on those offering a mix of text and images in myriad forms (Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr), and in apps and profiles where visual presentation and provision of information are important considerations. However, despite being so prominent in forms such as selfies, looping media, infographics, memes, online videos,…
From news blogs to news on Twitter: Gatewatching and collaborative news curation
This chapter explores the role of news blogs as a second tier of news coverage and commentary that engages in gatewatching and critiquing the mainstream news, and demonstrates the close interconnections between news bloggers and independent journalists. It also traces the current transition of news gatewatching from independent blogs to shared social media spaces, and outlines the potential consequences of this transformation
News via Voldemort: Parody accounts in topical discussions on Twitter
Parody accounts are prevalent on Twitter, offering irreverent interpretations of public figures, fictional characters and more. These accounts post comments framed within the context of their fictional universes or stereotypes of their subjects, responding in-character to topical events. This article positions parody accounts as a ritualised social media practice, an extension of fan practices and irreverent Internet culture. By providing a typol…
Occupy Oakland and #oo: Uses of Twitter within the Occupy movement
Social media have become crucial tools for political activists and protest movements, providing another channel for promoting messages and garnering support. Twitter, in particular, has been identified as a noteworthy medium for protests in countries including Iran and Egypt to receive global attention. The Occupy movement, originating with protests in, and the physical occupation of, Wall Street, and inspiring similar demonstrations in other U.S…
A methodology for mapping Instagram hashtags
While social media research has provided detailed cumulative analyses of selected social media platforms and content, especially Twitter, newer platforms, apps, and visual content have been less extensively studied so far. This paper proposes a methodology for studying Instagram activity, building on established methods for Twitter research by initially examining hashtags, as common structural features to both platforms. In doing so, we outline m…
Political Networks on Twitter: Tweeting the Queensland state election
This paper examines patterns of political activity and campaigning on Twitter in the context of the 2012 election in the Australian state of Queensland. Social media have been a visible component of political campaigning in Australia at least since the 2007 federal election, with Twitter, in particular, rising to greater prominence in the 2010 federal election. At state level, however, they have remained comparatively less important thus far. In …
The Arab Spring and Social Media Audiences: English and Arabic Twitter Users and Their Networks
Although popular media narratives about the role of social media in driving the events of the 2011 "Arab Spring" are likely to overstate the impact of Facebook and Twitter on these uprisings, it is nonetheless true that protests and unrest in countries from Tunisia to Syria generated a substantial amount of social media activity. On Twitter alone, several millions of tweets containing the hashtags #libya or #egypt were generated during 2011, both…
Confrontation and Cooptation: A Brief History of Australian Political Blogs
Even early on, political blogging in Australia was not an entirely alternative endeavour - the blogosphere has seen early and continued involvement from representatives of the mainstream media. However, the acceptance of the blogging concept by the mainstream media has been accompanied by a comparative lack of acceptance of individual bloggers. Analyses and commentary published by bloggers have been attacked by journalists, creating an at times a…
Mapping the Australian Networked Public Sphere
This article reports on a research program that has developed new methodologies for mapping the Australian blogosphere and tracking how information is disseminated across it. The authors improve on conventional web crawling methodologies in a number of significant ways: First, the authors track blogging activity as it occurs, by scraping new blog posts when such posts are announced through Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. Second, the author…
Challenges of Tracking Topical Discussion Networks Online
Attempts to map online networks, representing relationships between people and sites, have covered sites including Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. However, the predominant approach of static network visualization, treating months of data as a single case rather than depicting changes over time or between topics, remains a flawed process. As different events and themes provoke varying interactions and conversations, it is proposed that case-by-case …
Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures
The Arab Spring and Social Media Audiences: English and Arabic Twitter Users and Their Networks
Although popular media narratives about the role of social media in driving the events of the 2011 "Arab Spring" are likely to overstate the impact of Facebook and Twitter on these uprisings, it is nonetheless true that protests and unrest in countries from Tunisia to Syria generated a substantial amount of social media activity. On Twitter alone, several millions of tweets containing the hashtags #libya or #egypt were generated during 2011, both…
Mapping the Australian Networked Public Sphere
This article reports on a research program that has developed new methodologies for mapping the Australian blogosphere and tracking how information is disseminated across it. The authors improve on conventional web crawling methodologies in a number of significant ways: First, the authors track blogging activity as it occurs, by scraping new blog posts when such posts are announced through Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. Second, the author…
Never Gonna GIF You Up: Analyzing the Cultural Significance of the Animated GIF
The animated Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is a digital file format with a long history within internet cultures and digital content. Emblematic of the early Web, the GIF fell from favor in the late 1990s before experiencing a resurgence that has seen the format become ubiquitous within digital communication. While the GIF has certain technical affordances that make it highly versatile, this is not the sole reason for its ubiquity. Instead, G…
News via Voldemort: Parody accounts in topical discussions on Twitter
Parody accounts are prevalent on Twitter, offering irreverent interpretations of public figures, fictional characters and more. These accounts post comments framed within the context of their fictional universes or stereotypes of their subjects, responding in-character to topical events. This article positions parody accounts as a ritualised social media practice, an extension of fan practices and irreverent Internet culture. By providing a typol…
Confrontation and Cooptation: A Brief History of Australian Political Blogs
Even early on, political blogging in Australia was not an entirely alternative endeavour - the blogosphere has seen early and continued involvement from representatives of the mainstream media. However, the acceptance of the blogging concept by the mainstream media has been accompanied by a comparative lack of acceptance of individual bloggers. Analyses and commentary published by bloggers have been attacked by journalists, creating an at times a…
Challenges of Tracking Topical Discussion Networks Online
Attempts to map online networks, representing relationships between people and sites, have covered sites including Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. However, the predominant approach of static network visualization, treating months of data as a single case rather than depicting changes over time or between topics, remains a flawed process. As different events and themes provoke varying interactions and conversations, it is proposed that case-by-case …
Mapping the Australian Networked Public Sphere
This article reports on a research program that has developed new methodologies for mapping the Australian blogosphere and tracking how information is disseminated across it. The authors improve on conventional web crawling methodologies in a number of significant ways: First, the authors track blogging activity as it occurs, by scraping new blog posts when such posts are announced through Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. Second, the author…
Challenges of Tracking Topical Discussion Networks Online
Attempts to map online networks, representing relationships between people and sites, have covered sites including Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. However, the predominant approach of static network visualization, treating months of data as a single case rather than depicting changes over time or between topics, remains a flawed process. As different events and themes provoke varying interactions and conversations, it is proposed that case-by-case …
Confrontation and Cooptation: A Brief History of Australian Political Blogs
Even early on, political blogging in Australia was not an entirely alternative endeavour - the blogosphere has seen early and continued involvement from representatives of the mainstream media. However, the acceptance of the blogging concept by the mainstream media has been accompanied by a comparative lack of acceptance of individual bloggers. Analyses and commentary published by bloggers have been attacked by journalists, creating an at times a…
Political Networks on Twitter: Tweeting the Queensland state election
This paper examines patterns of political activity and campaigning on Twitter in the context of the 2012 election in the Australian state of Queensland. Social media have been a visible component of political campaigning in Australia at least since the 2007 federal election, with Twitter, in particular, rising to greater prominence in the 2010 federal election. At state level, however, they have remained comparatively less important thus far. In …
The Arab Spring and Social Media Audiences: English and Arabic Twitter Users and Their Networks
Although popular media narratives about the role of social media in driving the events of the 2011 "Arab Spring" are likely to overstate the impact of Facebook and Twitter on these uprisings, it is nonetheless true that protests and unrest in countries from Tunisia to Syria generated a substantial amount of social media activity. On Twitter alone, several millions of tweets containing the hashtags #libya or #egypt were generated during 2011, both…
Occupy Oakland and #oo: Uses of Twitter within the Occupy movement
Social media have become crucial tools for political activists and protest movements, providing another channel for promoting messages and garnering support. Twitter, in particular, has been identified as a noteworthy medium for protests in countries including Iran and Egypt to receive global attention. The Occupy movement, originating with protests in, and the physical occupation of, Wall Street, and inspiring similar demonstrations in other U.S…
A methodology for mapping Instagram hashtags
While social media research has provided detailed cumulative analyses of selected social media platforms and content, especially Twitter, newer platforms, apps, and visual content have been less extensively studied so far. This paper proposes a methodology for studying Instagram activity, building on established methods for Twitter research by initially examining hashtags, as common structural features to both platforms. In doing so, we outline m…
From news blogs to news on Twitter: Gatewatching and collaborative news curation
This chapter explores the role of news blogs as a second tier of news coverage and commentary that engages in gatewatching and critiquing the mainstream news, and demonstrates the close interconnections between news bloggers and independent journalists. It also traces the current transition of news gatewatching from independent blogs to shared social media spaces, and outlines the potential consequences of this transformation
News via Voldemort: Parody accounts in topical discussions on Twitter
Parody accounts are prevalent on Twitter, offering irreverent interpretations of public figures, fictional characters and more. These accounts post comments framed within the context of their fictional universes or stereotypes of their subjects, responding in-character to topical events. This article positions parody accounts as a ritualised social media practice, an extension of fan practices and irreverent Internet culture. By providing a typol…
Instagrammatics and digital methods: Studying visual social media, from selfies and GIFs to memes and emoji
Visual content is a critical component of everyday social media, on platforms explicitly framed around the visual (Instagram and Vine), on those offering a mix of text and images in myriad forms (Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr), and in apps and profiles where visual presentation and provision of information are important considerations. However, despite being so prominent in forms such as selfies, looping media, infographics, memes, online videos,…
Never Gonna GIF You Up: Analyzing the Cultural Significance of the Animated GIF
The animated Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is a digital file format with a long history within internet cultures and digital content. Emblematic of the early Web, the GIF fell from favor in the late 1990s before experiencing a resurgence that has seen the format become ubiquitous within digital communication. While the GIF has certain technical affordances that make it highly versatile, this is not the sole reason for its ubiquity. Instead, G…
Emoji hashtags // hashtag emoji: Of platforms, visual affect, and discursive flexibility
This paper examines the communicative functions of emoji in concert with hashtags, comparing two platform-specific approaches to combining hashtags and emoji: emoji hashtags as discursive markers on Instagram, and platform-directed hashtag emoji on Twitter. These approaches offer key insights into the dynamics between the platforms and their users, from user-led practices on Instagram to the commercial partnerships over-riding user intentionality…
Automating the digital everyday: An Introduction
This Special Issue brings together a range of social science and humanities perspectives on the relationships among automation, digital media and everyday life. We have aimed to get beyond the current hype and anxieties around self-driving cars, algorithms and robotics, and to achieve a more precise and grounded understanding of exactly what might be meant by automation, how and with what effects it is becoming entangled with everyday life and ho…
Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures
Platform Specificities: The Platform Books Panel
Social media platforms shape our lives on micro, meso and macro levels. They have transformed our everyday practices as individuals, or social practices as small and large groups, and have multiple, entangled impacts on rituals of democracy and cultural (re)production, organization of labor and industry. This panel brings together five papers, each by authors of recently published or forthcoming platform books. Together, the papers offer an analy…
Platformed solidarity: Examining the performative politics of Twitter hashflags
This paper conceptualises platformed solidarity, describing how platforms change their affordances to support particular social justice causes, sometimes temporarily, and often in response to current events. Such actions allow platforms to perform their support of different interests in response to issues such as racial and gender equality or pro-democratic aims, among other examples. In each case, a specific feature of the platform is modified t…
Social media (13 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · World Wide Web (10 works) · Political science (8 works) · Social Media and Politics (8 works) · Media studies (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Media Studies and Communication (5 works)