In his dissertation, Eirik Jacobsen is concerned with the encounter between independent music culture and social media technology. The thesis focuses on the distributional and relational labor involved in carrying out musical projects and explores how independent artists and bands make use and sense of social media technology. This involves a theoretical and empirical investigation of how indie artists form and maintain relations in their socioeconomic networks, as well as the significance of social media for shaping and expressing social identities.
The study employs an ethnographic and qualitative approach, involving interviews with local indie performers in Oslo, Norway, as well as critical content analyses of social media material. The study is situated in the fields of popular music and media studies and seeks to understand in what ways technological developments within social media have been crucial for local indie musicians in the context of the contemporary music industry, as well as what it signifies for local indie music as a sociocultural concept.
Eirik Jacobsen successfully defended his dissertation on June 21 2024.
Trial lecture
Designated topic: "Media And Indie Music: A Critical History Of Entanglement"
Friday 21 June, 10.15am Gamle festsal
Evaluation committee
- Doctor Nancy Baym, Microsoft Research New England (first opponent)
- Professor Nick Prior, University of Edinburgh (second opponent)
- Associate Professor Áine Mangaoang, University of Oslo (committee administrator)
Chair of the defence
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Associate Professor Peter Edwards, University of Oslo
Supervisors
- Professor Yngvar Kjus, University of Oslo
- Professor Ragnhild Brøvig, University of Oslo (co-supervisor)