Karin Fast

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Academic interests

I am Associate Professor/Docent in Media and Communication Studies at the department of Geography, Media and Communication, Karlstad University, Sweden. Currently, I hold a position as Researcher at the Department of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Oslo, where I work in the project Invasive Media, Ambivalent Users and Digital Detox (Digitox), led by Professor Trine Syvertsen (University of Oslo) and funded by the Norwegian Research Council (2019-23). The project is a collaboration between the University of Oslo (media studies and psychology), University of Bergen (media studies) and Kristiania University (media/game studies). I will work full-time in the project until June 2021. Part of my job is to coordinate one of the project's four work packages: Norms and policies. 

I finished my PhD in 2012, with my thesis More Than Meets the Eye: Transmedial Entertainment as a Site of Pleasure, Resistance and Exploitation. The thesis builds on a full-circuit qualitative study of Hasbro’s Transformers brand, and scrutinizes producer-consumer power-relations in the age of media convergence through the lenses of political economy and cultural studies.

Today, my research spans four key research fields: (de- /counter-)mediatization, media work, transmedia and geomedia. My most recent projects and publications evolve around themes such as ‘transmedia work’, ‘coworking spaces’, ‘disconnection’, ‘gentrification’, and ‘geomedia technologies’. 

I have published in peer-reviewed journals such as Communication Theory, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Media, Culture & Society, Communication: The European Journal of Communication Research, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Communication and the Public, Media and Communication, and European Journal of Cultural Studies. Two of my latest books are:

  • Fast, K. & Jansson, A. (2019). Transmedia Work: Privilege and Precariousness in Digital Modernity. London: Routledge.
  • Fast, K., Jansson, A., Lindell, J., Ryan Bengtsson, L., & Tesfahuney, M. (2018). (Eds.) Geomedia Studies: Spaces and Mobilities in Mediatized Worlds. London: Routledge.

Ongoing, recently finished, and future research projects

The ongoing project Invasive Media, Ambivalent Users and Digital Detox (Digitox) (2019-2023) draws on interdiciplinary perspectives and insights from media studies, game studies and psychology to investigate causes, implications and reactions to intensified digital involvement. While many studies emphasise the positive and enabling potentials of digital media, this project analyses ambivalences, resistance and attempts at withdrawal and disconnection. The project includes studies of users, media texts and debates, as well as industry and policy reactions to concerns about media intrusiveness and overuse. Personally, I am especially invested in the sub-studies concerned with political and industrial perspectives on and management of (dis)connection, and in questions pertaining to disconnection and work/labour. Link to the project website is available in the right menu.

Since January 2023, I also work in Hot Desks in Cool Places: Coworking as Post-Digital Industry and Movement; a 4-year research project funded by the Swedish Research Council and led by Professor André Jansson (Karlstad University). This project addresses the future of work, and battles over this future, by studying a trendsetting type of media-enhanced, urban workplaces: so-called coworking spaces. As the notion of 'post-digital' in the title suggests, particular attention in this project too is given to expressions of digital reflexivity and disconnection. For example, we are curious to learn how coworking spaces react to and potentially materialize (e.g. in office layout) digital disconnection sentiments and norms. 

I also conduct quantitative mediatization research within the frames of the longitudinal and hence ongoing survey project Meassuring Mediatization (funded by Anne-Marie och Gustaf Anders stiftelse för mediaforskning). This project attempts to locate media practices, attitudes and moralities in social space and is, as such, particularly attentive to class-based difference and inequality. You can find a link to the project website in the menu to the right.

Much of my research is conducted within The Centre for Geomedia Studies – a prioritized interdisciplinary research environment at the intersection of Media and Communication Studies, Film Studies, Tourism Studies, and Human Geography, at Karlstad University. I am part of the group’s management team and the coordinator of its research infrastructure. Link to the project group's website is available in the right menu.

Up until I began my Researcher position in the Digitox project, I was the project leader of Music Ecosystems Inner Scandinavia (MECO) – a three-year, bilingual, interdisciplinary and cross-sectional research project that, among other things, asks critical questions about the unequal conditions of music consumption in the era of accelerating digitalization and datafication. The project runs between 2018-2021 and is a collaboration between Karlstad University and Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, and co-funded by EU/Interreg Sweden-Norway, Region Värmland, Studiefrämjandet Örebro-Värmland, Karlstad University, Arvika Kommun, and Hedmark Fylkeskommune.

Other previous research projects include Music Innovation Networks Inner Scandinavia (MINS) (2015-18, funded by EU/Interreg) and Kinetic Élites: The Mediatization of Social Belonging and Close Relationships among Mobile Class Fractions (2012-15, funded by Swedish Research Council).

Courses taught

I have taught and supervised a variety of (geo)media studies courses across various educational levels, including the masters’ and doctoral studies' levels. I was the first Programme director of Master Programme in Geomedia Studies: Media, Mobility and Spatial Planning – an interdisciplinary, international master’s programme at Karlstad University, Sweden, that integrates Media and Communication Studies and Human Geography into what we call ‘Geomedia Studies’. The programme was launched in August 2019, and is open to qualified students from Media and Communication Studies, Human Geography, or adjacent subjects. 

Recently published peer-review articles

Fast, K. & Abend, P. (2022). Introduction to geomedia histories. New Media and Society, 24(11). DOI: 10.1177/14614448221122168

Fast, K. (2022). Who has the right to the coworking space?: Reframing platformed workspaces as elite territory in the geomedia city (accepted, in print). Space and Culture, 1-15. DOI: 10.1177/12063312221090429.

Fast, K. (2021). The disconnection turn: Three facets of disconnective work in post-digital capitalism. Convergence, 27(6), 1615-1630.

Lindell, J., Jansson, A., & Fast, K. (2021). I’m here! Conspicuous geomedia practices and the reproduction of social positions on social media. Information, Communication & Society, 1-20. DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2021.1925322.

Jansson, A., Bengtsson, S., Fast, K., & Lindell, J. (2021). Mediatization from within: A plea for emic approaches to media-related social change. Communication Theory, 31(4), 956-977.

Bengtsson, S., Fast, K., Jansson, A., & Lindell, J. (2021). Media and basic desires: An approach to measuring the mediatization of daily human life. Communications, 46(2), 275-296.

Fast, K., Ljungberg, E., & Braunerhielm, L. (2019). On the social construction of geomedia technologies. Communication and the Public 4(2), 89-99. 

Fast, K. (2018). A discursive approach to mediatization: Corporate technology discourse and the trope of media indispensability. Media and Communication, 6(2), 15-28.  

Örnebring, H., Karlsson, M., Fast, K., & Lindell, J. (2018). The space of journalistic work: A theoretical model. Communication Theory, 28(4), 403-423. AWARD WINNING ARTICLE 

Fast, K. & Örnebring, H. (2017). Transmedia World Building: ‘The Shadow’ (1931 - present) and ‘Transformers’ (1984 - present), International Journal of Cultural Studies, 20(6), 636–652. 

Fast, K., Örnebring, H, & Karlsson, M. (2016). Metaphors of free labor: A typology of unpaid work in the media sector, Media, Culture & Society, 38(7), 963-978. 

Fast, K. & Lindell, J. (2016). The elastic mobility of business elites: Negotiating the ‘home’ and ‘away’ continuum, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 19(5), 435–449.

Recently published books and book chapters

Fast, K., Lindell, J. & Jansson, A. (2021). Disconnection as distinction: A Bourdieusian study of where people withdraw from digital media. In Jansson, A. & Adams, P. C. (Eds.) Disentangling: The Geographies of Digital Disconnection. Oxford University Press, pp. 61-90.

Fast, K., & Jansson, A. (2019). Transmedia Work: Privilege and Precariousness in Digital Modernity. London: Routledge.

Fast, K., Jansson, A., Tesfahuney, M., Ryan-Bengtsson, L. & Lindell, J. (2018). Geomedia Studies: Spaces and Mobilities in Mediatized Worlds. New York: Routledge. 

Fast, K., Jansson, A., Tesfahuney, M., Ryan Bengtsson, L., & Lindell, J. (2018). Introduction to Geomedia Studies. In K. Fast, A. Jansson, M. Tesfahuney, L. Ryan-Bengtsson, & J. Lindell (2018). Geomedia Studies: Spaces and Mobilities in Mediatized World. New York: Routledge, pp. 1-17

Jansson, A., Fast, K. (2018). Transmedia identities: From fan cultures to liquid lives. In M. Freeman & R. R. Gambarato (red.) The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies, pp. 40-49. 

Awards

’Top Faculty Paper Award of the ICA Philosophy, Theory and Critique Division’, 2019, for the paper Bengtsson, S., Fast, K., Jansson, A., & Lindell, J. (2019). Media and basic desires: An approach to measuring the mediatization of daily life. ICA 69th Annual Meeting, May 24-28, Washington D C., USA.

‘The Wolfgang Donsbach Outstanding Article of the Year Award’ of the ICA Journalism Studies Division, 2019, for the article Örnebring, H., Karlsson, M., Fast, K., & Lindell, J. (2018). The space of journalistic work: A theoretical model. Communication Theory, 28(4), 403-423.

Appointments

Docent/Associate professor, February 2020

Positions held

  • PhD student in Media and Communication Studies at the Department of Geography, Media and Communication at Karlstad University, Sweden

  • Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies at the Department of Geography, Media and Communication at Karlstad University, Sweden

  • External examiner at the Department of Media and Communication at University of Oslo, Norway

  • Researcher at the Department of Media and Communication at University of Oslo, Norway

Tags: Media and communication, Mediatization, Disconnection, Geomedia, Transmedia, Labour, Working life
Published Feb. 13, 2020 10:33 AM - Last modified Apr. 13, 2023 11:02 AM