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Andreas Schellewald
Graduate School Fellow
Goldsmiths, University of London
Andreas Schellewald
Graduate School Fellow
Goldsmiths, University of London
I'm a mixed-methods researcher working on issues of media consumption, primarily taking an audience and cultural studies approach. The focus areas of my research are:
The overall objective of my research is to formulate better understandings of how people create meaning in today's media landscapes, and how they deal with the various challanges they face in that process.
In past projects I have studied, among other things, why people scroll through content feeds, watch others play video games online, or how they negotiate a sense of trust in algorithmic recommender systems.
I hold a PhD in Media and Communications from Goldsmiths, Univeristy of London. There, I also worked as an Associate Lecturer in the department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies.
Before that, I studied at universities in Edinburgh, Vienna, and Friedrichshafen. During that time, I worked as Research Assistant at the Chair of Media and Communication Science of Zeppelin University.
Since 2016, I've been working in the esports industry. Currently, I lead a team of experience researchers studying how people around the globe engage with esports and gaming as part of their everyday lives.
An overview of my academic publications and projects can be found below (click on titles to expand).
Abstract: Every day, millions of people take out their phones, open apps such as TikTok, and start scrolling. They watch videos, ‘like’ them, leave or read comments, and occasionally share the content they discover with others. A lot is being said about scrollers in debates. Yet, their stories, voices, and lived experiences rarely stand in the foreground. Without these millions consuming content on a daily basis, digital platforms like TikTok would not exist. Their popularity and commercial viability rest on continuous consumption, meaning, the formation of an audience attracting creators and advertisers alike. This thesis takes TikTok as a case and investigates it from an audience studies perspective. It ethnographically enters the world of scrollers in an attempt to unpack what it means to consume content online.
To do so, the thesis draws on data collected over one and a half years of fieldwork. During this period, the TikTok consumption of 30 young adults based in the United Kingdom was studied using methods such as interviews, media mapping techniques, participant observations, and digital fieldwork. Through the collected data, an ethnographically situated account of online content consumption was developed. This account outlines how scrollers engage with the TikTok “For You” page as an everyday technology and resource generative of pleasure, relaxation, stimulation, inspiration, and social connection. It discusses how scrollers navigate TikTok as a commercial online space and the challenges they experience in that process. In that course, the thesis confronts concerns about the addictive design of apps like TikTok and the growing personalisation of media environments.
Participants were found to appropriate TikTok in creative ways as an escape site to manage their degrees of social connectedness. TikTok enabled them to momentarily disconnect and withdraw from social pressures or obligations. Simultaneously, the app provided a resource for meaningful reconnection through sharing content. Using TikTok was not unproblematic, however. Participants got carried away scrolling, and in response to that actively developed tactics to break the endless flow of the “For You” page. Likewise, they negotiated concerns about TikTok’s surveillance practices in a way that rendered their relationship with the app tense and fragile. Their trust in TikTok was conditional and continuously put to the test. Unravelling these dynamics of online content consumption, the thesis contributes to our understanding of social media like TikTok, digital everyday life, and their politics.
Abstract: A crucial element of TikTok consumption is the act of sharing TikTok videos with others, such as friends. In this article, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork with young adult TikTok users based in the United Kingdom to investigate this practice. I show how people use TikTok’s “For You” page as a resource to facilitate social relationships at a distance and in settings of physical copresence. I highlight how TikTok clips are shared in a phatic manner to activate social relationships, for example, by communicating messages such as “thinking about you” or relating to others by referencing TikTok memes in conversations. Attending to sharing practices, I argue, provides a fruitful way to understand how self-identities and interpersonal relationships are articulated in social media environments increasingly organized around the logic of personalization.
Abstract: In this paper I discuss the affordances and popularity of the short-video app TikTok from an audience studies point of view. I do so by drawing on findings from ethnographic fieldwork with young adult TikTok users based in the United Kingdom that was conducted in 2020 and 2021. I trace how using the app, specifically scrolling through the TikTok For You Page, the app’s algorithmic content feed, became a fixed part of the everyday routines of young adults. I show how TikTok appealed to them as a convenient means of escape and relief that they were unable to find elsewhere during and beyond times of lockdown. Further, I highlight the complex nature of TikTok as an app and the active role that users play in imagining and appropriating the app’s affordances as meaningful parts of their everyday social life. Closing the paper, I reflect on future directions of TikTok scholarship by stressing the importance of situated audience studies.
Abstract: In this article I report from an ethnographic investigation into young adult users of the popular short-video app TikTok. More specifically, I discuss their experience of TikTok’s algorithmic content feed, or so-called “For You Page.” Like many other personalized online environments today, the For You Page is marked by the tension of being a mechanism of digital surveillance and affective control, yet also a source of entertainment and pleasure. Focusing on people’s sense-making practices, especially in relation to stories about the TikTok algorithm, the article approaches the discursive repertoire that underpins people’s negotiation of this tension. Doing so, I theorize the role and relevance of “stories about algorithms” within the context of algorithmic imaginaries as activating users in sense-making processes about their algorithmic entanglements.
Abstract: TikTok is an app that allows people to create, share, and consume short-video content. Although only available internationally since 2017, it has already been downloaded more than 2 billion times and has around 800 million active users. Public interest in the fleeting and seemingly random video clips that TikTok hosts is high. In fact, it has grown steadily since the time of the Twitter-owned short-video app Vine that ended its service in 2016 with only a quarter of TikTok’s current userbase. However, despite this steady growth in popularity, observations and theorizations of short-video apps like TikTok remain lacking. In this article, I seek to address this lack by critically discussing how to study short-video communications from the bottom up and by presenting the results of an exploratory investigation into TikTok and its communicative forms. Doing so, this article contributes to opening a space for serious engagement with this burgeoning yet understudied element of digital culture in the future.
Schellewald, A. (2024). Ordinary uses of extraordinary technologies. Paper presented at DRHA: Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts 2024, Munich, Germany, September 8-10.
Schellewald, A. (2024). Putting trust to the test: Everyday negotiations of digital surveillance on TikTok. Paper presented at Data Power Conference, Graz, Austria, September 4-6.
Su, C., Schellewald, A., Yoon, J. (2024). Mapping data practices in gaming across publishing platforms, community sites, and online multiplayer games. Paper presented at IAMCR Christchurch 2024, International Association for Media and Communication Research, New Zealand, June 30 – July 4.
Schellewald, A. (2024). The message ‘this is for you’: Theorising how users and recommender systems interact in the personalisation of online environments. Poster presentation at 74th Annual ICA Conference, International Communication Association, Gold Coast, Australia, June 20-24.
Su, C., Schellewald, A., Yoon, J. (2024). Mapping data practices in gaming across publishing platforms, community sites, and online multiplayer games. Poster presentation at 74th Annual ICA Conference, International Communication Association, Gold Coast, Australia, June 20-24.
Schellewald, A. (2022). Locating the practice of scrolling through TikTok within the breakdown of 'normal' everyday life during the pandemic. Paper presented at the 'Media Breakdown and Recovery' International Symposium, Lund University, Sweden, March 16.
Schellewald, A. (2022). Understanding the practice of ‘mindless’ scrolling on TikTok in the context of pandemic life and social acceleration. Paper presented at the 'Making Sense of the High-Speed Society' Symposium, United Kingdom, January 14.
Schellewald, A. (2021). On getting carried away by the TikTok algorithm. Paper presented at AoIR 2021: The 22nd Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers, Online Conference, October 4-16.
Schellewald, A. (2021). Locating the popular pleasures of TikTok historically. Paper presented at ECREA Post conference event 'Old media persistence', European Communication Research and Education Association, Online Conference, September 10.
Schellewald, A. (2021). Scrolling through TikTok: Notes on the pleasures of ‘passive’ consumption. Paper presented at ‘Agency in a Datafied Society’, University of Bremen, Germany, July 28-30.
Schellewald, A. (2021). On TikTok and the popular pleasures of digital culture. Paper presented at IAMCR Nairobi 2021, International Association for Media and Communication Research, Online Conference, July 5-15.
Schellewald, A. and Madianou, M. (2021). Mapping polymedia: Ethnographic strategies for navigating ever complex media environments and practices. Paper presented at 71st Annual ICA Conference, International Communication Association, Online Conference, May 27-30.
Schellewald, A. (2021). Escaping and embracing ‘social grids’ through TikTok. Paper presented at 4th GeoMedia Conference, University of Siegen, Germany, May 5-8.
Schellewald, A. (2021). On TikTok and the possibility of living a 'digital good life' in the future. Paper presented at BSA 70th Anniversary Virtual Conference: Remaking the Future, British Sociological Association, Online, April 13-15.
Schellewald, A. (2021). Wasting time? On the temporal rhythms of TikTok. Paper presented at ‘The Material Life of Time’, 2nd International Temporal Belongings Conference, Online, March 15-17.
Schellewald, A. (2020). Post-human processuality: Theoretical reflections on writing digital culture. Paper accepted for 13th ACS Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference, Lisbon, Portugal. [Accepted but conference cancelled]
Schellewald, A. (2020). Wasting time - Reflections on contradiction, processuality, and post-sociality. Paper presented at 5th Affect and Social Media Conference, University of East London, England/UK. [Accepted but conference cancelled].
Schellewald, A. (2020). Moving on like nothing happened: A historical comment on short-form contents in-between Vine and TikTok. Paper presented at Media and Breakdown, Lund University, Sweden. [Accepted but conference cancelled].
Schellewald, A. (2020). Wasting time - Reflections on digital technology's affective grip. Paper presented at Rethinking Digital Myths, Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland, January 30-31.
Schellewald, A. (2019). How to approach the coupling of objective appearances and subjective purposes? Paper presented at DRHA: Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts 2019, United Kingdom, September 8-10.
Schellewald, A. (2019). Affect-Mood-Meaning: Theoretical reflections on the constitution and analysis of culture in the 21st century. Paper presented at ESA Annual Meeting 2019, European Sociological Association, United Kingdom, August 20-23.
Schellewald, A. (2019). What does the algorithm miss? The current state of user-generated content platforms, participatory culture, and algorithmic recommendations. Paper presented at IAMCR 2019: Communication and Culture / Digital Platforms, International Association of Media and Communication Researchers, Spain, July 12.
Schellewald, A. (2019). The poetics of platforms: on audio-visual and algorithmic containment. Paper presented at Tacit Engagement in the Digital Age, CRASSH, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, June 26-28.
Schellewald, A. (2019). The poetics of platforms: on audio-visual containers and topophilia in platform cultures. Paper presented at 3rd GeoMedia Conference, Karlstad University, Sweden, May 7-10.
Schellewald, A. (2019). Reconstructing digital culture: Methods to understand interactions between online communities, media organizations, and algorithmic recommender systems. Paper presented at 7th International Comparative Media Studies in Today’s World Conference, Russia, April 16-18.
Schellewald, A. (2018). The fans remember: Exploring practices of remembering in platform cultures along the case of Game of Thrones fan videos on YouTube. Paper presented at 1st International Popular Culture Conference, University of Seville, Spain, December 12-15.
Schellewald, A. (2018). Negotiating entertainment commodities invested in: an observation on the discursive functioning of movie trailers and community trailer re-cuts. Paper presented at 24th International Film Studies Conference, Roma Tre University, Italy, November 22-23.
Schellewald, A. (2018). Going down the algorithmic rabbit hole: approaching affective engagement in montage videos on social media platforms. Paper presented at 4th Affect and Social Media Conference, University of East London, United Kingdom, November 7.
If you have questions on my work, feel free to get in touch anytime. I'm always happy to chat on any topic related to my areas of interest.