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MA guest lecture

Young Lives, Digital Fame: Child Influencers and TikTok Youth Cultures

Date: 12 November 2026
Time: 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Venue: Rm 3505, L3, Li Dak Sum Yip Yio Chin Academic Building, CityUHK

This guest lecture combines insights from Prof. Abidin’s two publications:

Child Influencers: How Children Become Entangled with Social Media Fame

Social media is proliferating with influencers, but despite their prevalence and the extensive body of scholarship, there is no comprehensive study that frames the historical and contemporary phenomenon of child influencers. Drawing on original empirical ethnographic fieldwork and case studies from Asia Pacific and beyond, and spanning various digital platforms, this book discusses key historical milestones, scandals, and the social and cultural contexts that have led to ordinary children becoming famous online around the world. The book introduces a framework for identifying units of analysis in our study of children online, including: Mummy Bloggers; Micro-microcelebrity; Family Influencers; Child Influencers; KidTok; Meme Celebrities; Viral Stars; Variety Stars; Factories; and Ground Zero. The book closes with reflections on how changing public discourse has resulted in important pivots in the ways child influencers are perceived by the media, instruments of governance, scholars, and the everyday public.

TikTok and Youth Cultures: Insights on new capitals

TikTok has become a critical conduit for channelling and suppressing attention online, and for how users enact personal agency to circumvent the limitations of social media platforms and the expectations of online communities. Using anthropological methods to produce deep and insightful ethnographies about TikTok and its core users, the book helps readers develop a critical understanding of TikTok’s impact on society, its place in the social media landscape, and its cultural relevance around the world. This talk will focus on a framework of new capitals on TikTok and how these impact the spaces we inhabit.

PhD Workshop

Date: 13 November 2026
Time: 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Venue: Screening Room 2 (M6058), L6, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, CityUHK

Digital Ethnographies of Influencer Cultures

New generations of ethnographers are often as familiar with digital media as their research participants, and yet this familiarity does not necessarily grant smooth entrées, flawless interactions, effortless participation, and clean-cut conclusions. Rather, despite their interactional proficiency and insider positioning, digital ethnographers can encounter deadlocks, rejections and failures. Despite our preparation for fieldwork, a majority of what ethnographers actually do in the field may require ‘gut-feeling’, ‘sensing’, and ‘whim’. But the calibration of these ‘in the moment‘ decisions can be fine-tuned, rehearsed, and ingrained through honing an ethnographic sensibility, anthropological eye, and reflexive immersion in the field. In this workshop, I review some parameters for designing robust digital ethnographic projects, and reflect on stories from my fieldwork on influencer cultures in the Asia Pacific and Nordic since 2008 as counselling stations for negotiating ethnographic encounters with care and tact.

About the Speaker

Crystal Abidin – Curtin University Profile

Google Scholar Profile

Seminar Curator & Facilitator: Prof. WANG Weixiang