Christian Ritter

Christian S. Ritter is a media anthropologist specializing in mobile media ecologies. Drawing on science and technology studies and the anthropology of data, his latest ethnographic fieldwork has primarily focused on locative media and mobile vlogging. He is a senior lecturer in the Department of Geography, Media and Communication at Karlstad University. His prime research interests include mobile media, human mobility, ecologies of expertise and multispecies worlds. Christian has conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Estonia, Norway, Singapore, Turkey, and on the island of Ireland. He has widely researched the entanglements of local knowledge, bottom-up place-making, and media technologies. Prior to relocating to Sweden, he acted as a lecturer in the Department of Media and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Christian also held research fellowships at the Centre of Excellence in Media Innovation and Digital Culture, Tallinn University, and in the Department of Social Anthropology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The main outcomes of his research into tourism media have been published in the monograph Locating the influencer: Place and platform in global tourism (Emerald, 2024). He has served as a co-chair of the working group Migration and Mobility of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) since 2023.

Christian teaches in the Master’s programme for Geomedia Studies and in various programs at BA level.

Ritter, C. (2025). Mediating nature: Expertise and species data in the climate crisis. kritisk etnografi – Swedish Journal of Anthropology. 

Ritter, C. (2024). The epistemic culture of data minimalism: Conducting an ethnography of travel influencers. In Hendry, N. & Richardson, I. (eds.) Data Excess in Digital Media Research.

J Sinanan, J. &  C. Ritter (2024). Emerging media technologies in the tourist encounter. Editorial in Tourism Geographies.

Ritter, C. (2024). Locating the influencer: Place and platform in global tourism. Emerald.

Jansson, A. &  Ritter, C. (2024). Mapping geomedia studies: Origins, trajectories, and future directions. Media and Communication

Ritter, C. (2023). Gazing from the air: tourist encounters in the age of travel drones. Tourism Geographies.

Ritter, C. (2023). Digital ethnography: Understanding platform labour from within. In (Eds.), C. Tagliaro, M. Orel, & Y. Hua Methodological Approaches for Workplace Research and Management. Routledge. 

Ritter, C. (2022). Unlocking Heritage in situ: Tourist Places and Augmented Reality in Estonia. In E. Costa, P. Lange, N. Haynes, & J. Sinanan (Eds.) The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology.

Ritter, C. (2022). The Augmented Reality of Tourist Sites: Strolling into Singapore’s Heritages. In R. Trandafoiu (Ed.) Border Crossings and Mobilities on Screen, Routledge.

Ritter, C. (2022). Reinventing Luxury Travel Imaginaries: Early Responses of Travel Influencers to the COVID-19 Pandemic. In A. Kotur & S. Dixit (Eds.) Emerald Handbook on Luxury Management for Tourism and Hospitality.

Ritter, C. (2021). Rethinking Digital Ethnography: A Qualitative Approach to Understanding Interfaces. Qualitative Research.

Ritter, C. (2020). From Print Media to Blogs: A Note on Rewriting Heritage. In U. Kockel, P. McDermott, & L. Campbell (Eds.) Per Scribendum, Sumus. Ethnopoesis, or: Writing Heritage. A Cèilidh in Honour of Mairéad Nic Craith, LIT Verlag.

Ritter, C. (2019). Shifting Needs for Expertise: Digitized Taskscapes in the Norwegian Oil and Gas Industry. The Extractive Industries and Society.

Liestøl, G., Ritter, C., & Ibrus, I. (2019). Audiovisual Industries and Tourism: Forms of Convergence. In I. Ibrus (Ed.) Emergence of Cross-innovation Systems, Emerald.

Ritter, C. (2018). Distributing Services Through the Cloud Infrastructure: The Case of a Norwegian Software Firm. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. Conference Proceedings of the 19th Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers. Montreal, Canada.

Ritter, C. (2017). The Moroccan Diaspora in Istanbul: Experiencing Togetherness through Participatory Media. Cultural Analysis.

Ritter, C., & Kmec, V. (2017). Religious Practices and Networks of Belonging in an Immigrant Congregation: the German-Speaking Lutheran Congregation in Dublin. Journal for Contemporary Religion.

Ritter, C. (2017). Travel Technology. In L. Lowry, & J. Golson (Eds.) The Sage International Encyclopedia of Travel and Tourism. Sage Publications.

Ritter, C. (2017). Leisure Travel, Sociology of. In L. Lowry, & J. Golson (Eds.) The Sage International Encyclopedia of Travel and Tourism. Sage Publications.

Ritter, C. (2016). Sudan, Tourism. In: Jafari, J.; Xiao, H. (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Tourism. Springer Press.

Ritter, C. (2016). Digital Freedom and Political Change: A Discourse Analysis of the Struggle over Water Charges in Ireland. Selected Papers of Internet Research (SPIR). Conference Proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers. Berlin, Germany.

Ritter, C. (2015). Balancing the Here and There: Transnational Mobilities of Moroccan Middle-class Professionals in Istanbul. Anthropology of the Middle East.

Ritter, C. (2015). Unveiling the Unspoken in Life Narratives: the Dynamics of Storytelling in the Lutheran Congregation in Belfast. Civilisations. Revue internationale d'anthropologie and des sciences humaines.

Ritter, C. (2014). Building Digitized Spaces on Facebook: an Ethnographic Exploration of the Irish Diaspora Community in Munich. In: Proceedings of the Third Argumentor Conference on Argumentation and Rhetoric. Partium Press. Partium Christian University, Romania.

Ritter, C. (2013). Creating Networks of Support: the Lutheran Circle in Dublin. Popular Anthropology Magazine.

Ritter, C. (2011). Lebensläufe zwischen familiarer Tradierung und sozialer Integration. Eine biografische Untersuchung zur Immigration in Strasbourg. In: Alzheimer, H. et al. (Eds.) Jahrbuch für Europäische Ethnologie. Frankreich. Schöningh.

Ritter, C. (2008). Frühlingsrollen in der Diaspora. Asiatische Lebensmittel jenseits der Enklavenökonomie. In R. Römhild et al. (Eds.) Fast Food. Slow Food. Ethnographische Studien zum Verhältnis von Globalisierung und Regionalisierung in der Ernährung. Kulturanthropologische Notizen.