Grant Bollmer

is a theorist and historian of digital culture.


I am an Associate Research Professor in the department of Communication at the University of Maryland, College Park. My research investigates a wide range of topics related to digital media, including emotion recognition, selfies, memes, influencers, terrible videogames, motion capture, virtual reality and empathy, among many other topics. 

I am the author or coauthor of five books. Inhuman Networks: Social Media and the Archaeology of Connection (2016),  examines the history of connectivity in Western culture as it crosses the development of technological, biological, financial, and social networks. Theorizing Digital Cultures (2018),  provides a model for the study of digital media that synthesizes British and German approaches to media and culture. Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction (2019), attempts to update and revise the claims of Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis in relation to a variety of recent theoretical innovations, especially New and Feminist Materialisms. The Affect Lab: The History and Limits of Measuring Emotion (2023) is a history of the American psychology of emotions through the lens of specific tools used to identify and produce emotion, using this history as a critique of any neurological or biological foundations of “affect theory.” The Influencer Factory: A Marxist Theory of Corporate Personhood on YouTube (2024), coauthored with Katherine Guinness, uses the backgrounds of YouTube influencer videos to examine the infrastructures of contemporary capitalism.

Among other awards, I’ve been the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a residency at the Media Archaeology Lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and was a contributor to an issue of the magazine esse: Arts + Opinions on “Empathy,” which received an honorable mention for “Best Editorial Package” from the Canadian National Magazine Awards/Les Prix du Magazine Canadien. Formerly, while I was employed at NC State, I was an NC State University Faculty Scholar, a recipient of the NC State CHASS Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in the Humanities, and recipient of the Robert M. Entman Award for Excellence in Communication Research.


This, however, is perhaps my proudest achievement. The above image is a meme by @cyborg.asm on Instagram, referencing the article “Do You Really Want to Live Forever,” which I coauthored with Katherine Guinness. The original meme can be found here and the article can be found here.

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a list of books, articles, projects, and other things
by grant bollmer





THE INFLUENCER FACTORY: A MARXIST THEORY OF CORPORATE PERSONHOOD ON YOUTUBE

(COAUTHORED WITH KATHERINE GUINNESS) 

“Influencers...achieve wealth, fame, and luxury by imagining themselves and acting not as individuals but as if their existence is equivalent to that of a vertically integrated corporation, a context in which rights and abilities are denied human citizens and transferred to corporate entities...”

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APRIL 2024




THE AFFECT LAB: THE HISTORY AND LIMITS OF MEASURING EMOTION

“Knowledge of the affects exists only as bodies are processed through a medium. Yet techniques of observation, inscription, and identification serve to invent that which is observed, inscribed, identified. The techniques of the Affect Lab precede and produce the affects they identify.”

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AUG 2023



MATERIALIST MEDIA THEORY: AN INTRODUCTION

“Media determine our reality, and any politics of media must begin by foregrounding media's materiality.”

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SEPT 2019

신유물론과 유물론: 미디어의 물질성에 대하여

[New Materialism and Materialism: On the Materiality of Media]

Korean translation of Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction

Translated by Kim Soo-cheol
MAY 2024



THEORIZING DIGITAL CULTURES

“[D]igital media—in providing the material and infrastructure for a host of practices and interactions—affect identities, bodies, social relations, artistic practices, and the environment.”

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SEPT 2018




INHUMAN NETWORKS

“[C]ontemporary network culture unintentionally repeats debates over the limits of Western modernity to provide an idealized future where ‘the human’ is interchangeable with abstract, flowing data connected through well-managed, distributed networks.”

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AUG 2016



NETWORKED LIMINALITY

“Rather than networked connectivity, networked liminality allows us to foreground the thresholds, oppositions, processes, and movements that make up networked subjectivity.“

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SEPT 2020



JOURNAL ARTICLES

Academic content, peer-reviewed for your perusal.

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BOOK CHAPTERS

Can be otherwise prohibitively expensive to access.

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OTHER WRITINGS

Occassional pieces, invited posts, magazine articles.

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