Academic Research
I study the role of new media technologies in processes of collective identification, social, and institutional change.
My research is motivated by a desire to understand how media technology is changing what it means to belong and the cultural politics associated with new forms of sociality and social organization.
My work centers on the role myths, narratives, and affect play in socio-technical processes of collective identification, sense-making, and institutional change. Current and past projects span substantive topics of nostalgia, misinformation, and the knowledge cultures of professions such as public relations and public policy.
Drawing on a background that spans the social sciences (sociology, public policy), humanities (French literature), and professional practice (public relations), I combine cultural and historical analysis with digital methods to map/trace the evolution of social formations and how collective meanings emerge within them.
Research Interests
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Conner, V. A. (2025). Fever dreaming on TikTok: A conceptual framework for performative nostalgia. International Journal of Communication, 19, 25. Retrieved from https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/22560
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Rojecki, A., Conner, V. A., & Royal, P. (2024). Live free and die: How social media amplify populist vaccine resistance. Social Media+ Society, 10(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241277293
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Conner, V. (2020). Myths and markets: The emergence of the public policy program at the University of Chicago [Master’s thesis, University of Chicago]. https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.11318
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Conner, V. (2023). “PR as an Epistemic Culture: The Role of the Public Relations Profession in Managing Misinformation and Challenges to Epistemic Authority.” Paper presented at the International Communication Association Annual Conference, Toronto, ON (May 29, 2023)
Publications
Conner, V. A. (2025). Fever dreaming on TikTok: A conceptual framework for performative nostalgia. International Journal of Communication, 19, 25. Retrieved from https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/22560
Rojecki, A., Conner, V. A., & Royal, P. (2024). Live free and die: How social media amplify populist vaccine resistance. Social Media+ Society, 10(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241277293
Conner, V. (2020). Myths and markets: The emergence of the public policy program at the University of Chicago [Master’s thesis, University of Chicago]. https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.11318
Committee: Andrew Abbott (Chair)
Cate Fugazzola (Preceptor)
Projects
Conference papers
Nostalgia and Digital Media
Conner, V. (2024). NOSTALGIC NEIGHBORHOODS OF TIKTOK: MAPPING A TOPOLOGY OF AFFECTIVE PUBLICS. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2024i0.13922
Association of Internet Researchers Annual Conference, Sheffield, UK (November 1, 2024)
Conner, V. A. (2024, June 21). Digital nostalgia, remediated: Defining a mediatized emotion.
International Communication Association Annual Conference, Gold Coast, Australia (June 21, 2024)
Conner, V. A. (2024, May 31). Into the depths: Re-articulating the aesthetic function in #nostalgiacore on TikTok.
Cultural Studies Association Annual Conference. (May 31, 2024)
Conner, V. (2023). Fever dreams and the ‘future of nostalgia’ on TikTok. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2023i0.13408
Association of Internet Researchers Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA (October 20, 2023 )
Backward Glances Biannual Graduate Student Conference, Northwestern University Screen Cultures Program, Evanston, IL (September 2022)
Epistemic Communities and Cultures
Conner, V. (2023, May 29). PR as an epistemic culture: The role of the public relations profession in managing misinformation and challenges to epistemic authority.
International Communication Association Annual Conference, Toronto, ON (May 29, 2023)
Misinformation
Rojecki, A., Royal, P., and Conner, V. (2023, May 26). Live free and die: COVID-19 as a vector for moral judgment and risk-taking.
American Political Science Association Annual Conference, Montreal, QC (September 2022)
International Communication Association Annual Conference, Toronto, ON (May 26, 2023)
Perspectives
“Rather than seeing nostalgia’s liminality as a problem, [performance studies] asks what it does in constructing social realities. Like nostalgia, performances exist in “betwixt and between” categories (Turner, 1969, as cited in Schechner, 2013, p. 66). Moments of transition introduce possibilities for transformation. Certain rituals, understood as “liminal performances,” suspend time and space, functioning as rites of passage with the performative potential to create “new situations, identities, and social realities” for those involved (p. 66).”
— On nostalgia as liminal performance (Conner, 2025, p. 6)
“As the literature on networked publics (boyd, 2010) and hashtag publics (Bruns et al, 2016) shows, hashtags are not only markers of location, as a technical affordance that aids in finding content and navigating platforms; they also serve socio-linguistic functions by discursively expressing ideas and sentiment, contributing to ambient forms of affiliation (Zappavigna,2018, 2011). Thus, I argue that how people use its main hashtag, #nostalgia, both reveals and constitutes communities on the platform”
“I argue these findings underscore the importance of TikTok’s socio-technical affordances in “wiring” semantic bonds of nostalgic affiliation and point to the difficulties of disentangling the logics of imitation (Zulli & Zulli, 2022) from the dynamics of affective publics on the platform (e.g., Hautea et al, 2021).”
— On TikTok’s nostalgic neighborhoods (Conner, 2024)
“Our findings foreground how the most shared news frames substituted emotional commitment to social bonds and moral conviction for rationally based self-protection (and protection of others). The surface irony is that this impulse originated in an ideological commitment to autonomy and individual rights. The deeper origins of the paradox derive from the tensions between political values that animate liberal democracy and the advances of science that support expert authority.”
— On social media and populist vaccine resistance (Rojecki, Conner, & Royal, 2024, p. 11)
“Myths, however stable as they may appear, are dynamic. While they can–and are often used–within organizations to justify and legitimate paradoxical organizational behavior, they also have the power to cross social space and temporalities in a way that catalyzes subtle, yet profound, organizational change.”