Research
Christian S. Ritter is an anthropologist of media and technology and a mobility researcher (immigration/racism, digital diasporas, cloud ecologies, locative tourism media). His prime research interests include mobile media, systems of professions, computational methods, tourism and videomaking. He is a senior lecturer in the Department of Geography, Media and Communication at Karlstad University. 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. He received his PhD from Ulster University, UK. In the past decade, he has conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Estonia, Ireland, Norway, Singapore, Turkey and the UK. His latest research, which was funded by the Estonian Research Council between 2018-2020, assesses the emergence of travel influencers as a professional group in the global tourism industry. Christian was a member of the 2023 AoIR Dissertation Award Committee. He received the virt2ue certification for research integrity trainers from the Embassy of Good Science and has been a co-chair of the working group Migration and Mobility of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF).
Selected publications
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.