Dr Crystal Abidin is a socio-cultural anthropologist of vernacular internet cultures, particularly young people’s relationships with internet celebrity, self-curation, and vulnerability.
Crystal is Senior Research Fellow and ARC DECRA Fellow in Internet Studies and at the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University, and Affiliate Researcher with the Media Management and Transformation Centre at Jönköping University. She was listed on Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia and Pacific Standard 30 Top Thinkers Under 30, and recently received the International Communication Association Popular Communication Early Career Scholar Prize and Isaac Manasseh Meyer Fellowship.
She researches influencer cultures, online visibility, and social media pop cultures especially in the Asia-Pacific region, and has published over 50 articles and chapters on various aspects of internet celebrity and vernacular internet cultures. Her books include Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online (2018), Microcelebrity Around the Globe: Approaches to Cultures of Internet Fame (co-editor Brown, 2018), Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures (co-authors Leaver & Highfield, 2019), Mediated Interfaces: The Body on Social Media (co-editors Warfield & Cambre, 2020), and tumblr: Curation, Creativity and Community (co-authors Tiidenberg & Hendry, forthcoming).