Karin Fast

My research interests span areas such as medaitization, media convergence, media work, free labor, the culture industries, fandom, transmediality, mobility, and news production. Methodologicaly, my expertise is in ethnography, netnography and qualitative interviews.

Currently, I am engaged in research connected to the Geomedia Research Group, which is an interdisciplinary research environment at the intersection of Media and Communication Studies, Film, Tourism, and Human Geography. From January 2017 I will conduct and coordinate research within the research strand 'Mediatization of Space and Culture'.

From September 2015 and August 2018 I am also involved in the EU-funded Inter-reg program Music Innovation Network Inners Scandinavia (MINS). My specific research focus here is on music production and distribution through fan participation and free (fan) labor.

Within the context of my engagement in the The Ander Center for Research on News and Opinion in the Digital Era (NODE) research center, I have scrutinized the role of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) as news producers. 

Between Januray 2013 and December 2015 I conducted research within the project Kinetic Élites: The Mediatization of Social Belonging and Close Relationships among Mobile Class Fractions.

From January 2013 and December 2015 I have also been affiliated with the interdisciplinary and cross-sectional committee Mediatization of Culture and Everyday Life, through publications and workshops.

I finished my PhD in 2012 with the thesis 'More than Meets the Eye: Transmedia Entertainment as a Site of Pleasure, Resistance and Exploitation', in which I analyze and critically discuss contemporary changes in the producer-consumer relationship that can partly be explained with reference to media convergence. More specifically, the thesis is concerned with the power-relationship between the entertainment industry and fans of entertainment properties as this manifests itself in the establishment, maintenance and promotion of immersive and increasingly commercial brand worlds. The argument is developed through a case study of the classic Transformers brand, which over a period of nearly 30 years has developed from a rather limited franchise into a world of entertainment, holding everything from toys and comics to block-buster Hollywood movies. By making manifest some of the fan labor that goes into today's entertainment commodities, and the ways in which this happen, the thesis adds necessary nuances to the popular rhetoric that typically stress only the empowering aspects of our contemporary participatory cultures.    

I have extensive experience (since 2013) from program and course development as Head of the Information & PR bachelor program (180 credits), at the Department of Geography, Media and Communication.

My teaching and course leadership experience ranges from undergraduate to graduate levels, and cover topics such as media theory, global culture industries, media history, mediatization, strategic communication, crisis communication, qualitative methods, and supervision.