Project leader: Nancy Thumim
Nancy Thumim was from September 2007 until February 2008 Research Fellow with Mediatized Stories, InterMedia, University of Oslo and is currently LSE Fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE where she completed her PhD in October 2007. Her thesis is titled: Mediating Self-Representations: Tensions Surrounding 'Ordinary' Participation in Public Sector Projects. Her work will be published as a monograph on self-representation and digital culture with Palgrave Macmillan in 2012.
Nancy's research broadly concerns the relations between members of the public and media. Thus she is interested in forms of representation and self-representation of members of the public - so called 'ordinary people' - in contemporary media and cultural spaces - digital, analogue, museum, gallery, community centre - . Following from this focus on representation of members of the public is a necessary attention to the power relations involved in the making and disseminating of such representations. At the same time she is concerned with how audiences receive, use, appear and intervene, in media representations. These research interests lead to a focus on questions of the processes of mediation; of participants and audiences; of media literacy; and across all of these areas, a concern with the methodological challenges arising in researching the relation between publics and media. Although not focusing on youth specifically Nancy's PhD work provides studies of digital storytelling relevant for these age groups as well as an entry into the conceptual discourse on mediation with other participants in the project. Her work observes public service institutions in contemporary Britain inviting self-representations by members of the public.
Thumim focuses BBCs Capture Wales and London's Voices (an oral history project at the Museum of London). She explores what processes of mediation are in these two case studies. Nancy formulates three dimensions of mediation: institutional mediation; textual mediation; and cultural mediation. She is not suggesting that mediation is in practice divided this way, but rather that this is conceptually useful. Institutional mediation describes a focus on the discourse of producers and producing institutions. Textual mediation describes a focus on form, and content. Cultural mediation describes a focus on participants' own cultural formations. In her thesis Nancy argues that processes of mediation are constituted through a series of tensions.
Publications
Thumim, N. (2012). Self-representation and digital culture. Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Thumim, N. (2010) 'Self-representation in museums: therapy or democracy?', Critical Discourse Studies 7(3): 291-304 (in special issue on Self-mediation: Citizenship and New Media.
Thumim, N. & L. Chouliaraki (2010) 'Legitimising the BBC in the Digital Cultural Sphere: The Case of Capture Wales', Javnost - The Public, 17(2): 83-100.
Thumim, N., Chouliaraki, L. (2010) ‘BBC and new media: public service broadcasting in a corporate market environment.’ In Chouliaraki, L., & Morsing, M. (Eds.) Media, Organisations, Identity. Basingtoke: Macmillan.
Thumim, N. (2009) ‘Everyone has a story to tell’: mediation and self representation in two UK institutions, International Journal of Cultural Studies 12(6): 617-638.
Thumim, N. (2009) 'Tension in the text: exploring self-representations in Capture Wales and London's Voices' in Hartley, J., and McWilliam, K. (eds). Story Circle: Digital Storytelling around the World. Blackwell.
Thumim, N. (2008) 'It's Good for Them to Know My Story': Cultural Mediation as Tension, in Lundby, K (ed). Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories: Self-representations in New Media. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Livingstone, S., Van Couvering, E., Thumim, N. (2008) 'Mixed methodology research on new literacies'. In Leu, D. J., Coiro, J., Knobel, M., and Lankshear, C. (eds.) Handbook of Research on New Literacies. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Livingstone, S., and Thumim, N. (2008) What is Fred telling us? A commentary on youtube.com/fred. Teachers' College Record, September 08, 2008.
Thumin, N. (2007) 'Challenges in Representing 'Anyone''. In Vertigo Magazine, December 2007
Thumim, N. (2006) 'Mediated self-representations: 'ordinary people' in 'communities'' in Herbrechter, S., and Higgins, M. (eds). Returning (to) Community: Theory, Culture and Political Practice of the Communal. Rodopi, Critical Studies series, Amsterdam Netherlands and New Jersey USA.
Presentations
Thumim, N. & G. Enli (2009) Socializing and Self-representation online: Exploring Facebook. resentation at the Mediatized Stories preconference on 'The presentation of self in everyday digital life', London: University of Westminster, 2 September.
Thumim, N. & G. Enli (2009) Feminist foundations: methodological approaches to socializing and self-representation on Facebook. Paper presented ICA, Chicago, Il, May 2009, as part of panel:
Beyond The Modifier: Feminist as Keyword.
Thumim, N. (2009), ‘What is self-representation?’ Paper presented at Centre for Media and Film, Seminar Series, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London, 4 March.
Thumim, N (2009) Can self-representation challenge representations in ‘postfeminist’ times? Invited paper in The terrible girls: feminism and popular Women’s Media Studies Network panel, MeCCSA, Bradford University, January 2009.
Thumim, N. (2008) 'Visitors as Publics in the Museum of London'. In panel on 'Public Participation, Media and Institutions: Three Case Studies'. International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), Stockholm, July 2008.
Thumim, N (2008) ‘How do processes of mediation shape self-representations? Oral histories at the Museum of London and Digital Storytelling at BBC Wales’. Presentation The Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media, Seminar Series (CSCYM), Institute of Education, London, 4 June.
Thumim, N. (2008) 'The Question of the Digital in Mediated Self-Representations'. In panel on 'Digital Mediations of Personal Narratives', International Communication Association (ICA), Montreal, May 2008.
Thumim, N (2007): 'Invited Self-representations'. Presentation to the conference, Transforming Audiences: Identity/ Creativity/ Everyday Life. Westminster, September 2007.
Thumim, N (2007): 'Mediating Self-Representation in Public Sector Projects'. Presentation to the conference, International Communication Association, san Francisco, 24-28 May, 2007.
Thumim, N (2007): 'A Critical Account of Digital Storytelling as it Appeared in Britain'. Presentation to the pre-conference. International Communication Association, UC Berkeley, 24 May, 2007.