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.

Intervening at the digital/social nexus, my dissertation—entitled “Nostalgic Neighborhoods of TikTok”—revisits sociality of nostalgia in algorithmic cultures during the present conjuncture of technological change and as the short-form video based social media platform remains an object of regulatory and geopolitical scrutiny.

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. Current and past projects span substantive topics of nostalgia, misinformation, and the knowledge cultures of professions such as public relations and public policy. 

Research Interests

  • Conner, V.A. (Forthcoming, Feb. 2027). Hacking the past: An autonetnography of digital nostalgizing in the digital habitus of the “old” internet. In K. Niemeyer (Ed.), Experiences of Nostalgia: Politics, Media, Futures. Palgrave McMillan.

    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

    Conner, V. (2025). NOSTALGIC NEIGHBORHOODS OF TIKTOK: MAPPING A TOPOLOGY OF AFFECTIVE PUBLICS. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2024i0.13922

  • 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

    Sundgaard, A., Burgering, G., Conner, V., & Reymond-Aubier, C. (2026). POV slopaganda: Genre emergence and genealogy. Digital Methods Initiative, University of Amsterdam. https://www.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/WinterSchool2026POVSlopagandaGenreGenealogy

  • 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

  • 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

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Conner, V. A. (2025). Fever Dreaming on TikTok: A conceptual framework for performative nostalgia. International Journal of Communication, 19, 25. 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

Book Chapters

Conner, V.A. (Forthcoming, Feb. 2027). Hacking the past: An autonetnography of digital nostalgizing in the digital habitus of the “old” internet. In K. Niemeyer (Ed.), Experiences of Nostalgia: Politics, Media, Futures. Palgrave McMillan.

Other Publications

Conner, V. (2025). NOSTALGIC NEIGHBORHOODS OF TIKTOK: MAPPING A TOPOLOGY OF AFFECTIVE PUBLICS. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2024i0.13922

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

Sundgaard, A., Burgering, G., Conner, V., & Reymond-Aubier, C. (2026). POV slopaganda: Genre emergence and genealogy. Digital Methods Initiative, University of Amsterdam. https://www.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/WinterSchool2026POVSlopagandaGenreGenealogy

Thesis

Conner, V. (2020) “Myths, markets, and the origins of policy education at the University of Chicago, 1969-1975.” [Master’s Thesis, University of Chicago.] Knowledge @ UChicago Repository. https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.11318

Projects

Working papers

Nostalgia and technological change

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)

PR as an epistemic culture

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)

Ambient propaganda

Sundgaard, A., Burgering, G., Conner, V., & Reymond-Aubier, C. (2026). POV slopaganda: Genre emergence and genealogy. Digital Methods Initiative, University of Amsterdam. https://www.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/WinterSchool2026POVSlopagandaGenreGenealogy

  • Winter School 2026 project, Digital Methods Initiative, University of Amsterdam (Jan 5-9. 2026).

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.”

— On organizational myth-making, (Conner, 2020)