Clare Southerton

COVID feelings and movement: Fear and lockdown in Sydney

Photo by Alexas_Fotos on Unsplash Clare Southerton As Sydney spends its first week in lockdown, perhaps unsurprisingly I’ve been thinking a lot about movement. Not just about getting out of my apartment (though that would be lovely), but about the relationship between feelings and movement during Australia’s most recent coronavirus outbreak. In her book, TheContinue reading “COVID feelings and movement: Fear and lockdown in Sydney”

Vitalities Lab 2020 Annual Report

Our 2020 Annual Report has now been published! You can download a copy below. The report captures some of the highlights from the last year, as well as a list of all our publications and activities for 2020.

Animal Crossing Fans: Come and play with us!

Are you an Animal Crossings fan? Meg at the Vitalities Lab is now looking for Animal Crossing players to participate in an in-game interview, to learn more about their experience of playing the game while social distancing in 2020. Here are the details: My Happy Place: Exploring the use of ‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ duringContinue reading “Animal Crossing Fans: Come and play with us!”

Is social media like food?

Clare Southerton It’s becoming more common to hear about social media ‘fasts’, digital detoxes, as well as media consumption practices understood in terms of digital ‘calories’, nutrition and diets. The language of health, wellness and the diet industry has well and truly spread to how we talk about social media, as well as other technologiesContinue reading “Is social media like food?”

Time in the ‘Time of Corona’

Katrine Meldgaard Kjær, Clare Southerton, Marianne Clark, Ash Watson As the COVID-19 pandemic has spread globally, our experiences of it have shifted over time since initial reports of the virus hit the headlines in January. These temporal shifts can be subtle, almost negligible, or more confronting. Yet even when they are more noticeable, it canContinue reading “Time in the ‘Time of Corona’”

COVID-19 and the myth of the digital ‘shift’

Clare Southerton After the COVID-19 pandemic had changed the way many researchers live and work, I started to see a lot of questions and discussion on social media within the academic community about taking research ‘online’ because it could no longer be conducted face-to-face. This is a bit curious because we’re having these conversations onContinue reading “COVID-19 and the myth of the digital ‘shift’”

Friendship by Design: Kawaii Villagers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Megan Rose Why has Animal Crossing: New Horizons been so popular during COVID-19 lockdown, and are the cute characters featured in the game so popular? My research at the Vitalities Lab explores this question with an ethnographic study of online Animal Crossing fandom communities and interviews with players. As a specialist in kawaii (cuteness), I’mContinue reading “Friendship by Design: Kawaii Villagers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons”

What COVID-19 can remind us of (but that we know from other events)

Jens Lindberg I did not plan to write about COVID-19. There have been so many texts at this point on the different trails of destruction the pandemic will leave behind, and how it will change things forever. But then again, looking back in history, writers will probably be right. So, maybe I can at leastContinue reading “What COVID-19 can remind us of (but that we know from other events)”