Susanna Paasonen
Professor of Media Studies
suspaa@utu.fi +358 29 450 3429 +358 50 328 9613 Arcanuminkuja 1 Turku ORCID identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6319-9155 |
Areas of expertise
internet research, sexuality studies, popular culture, affect theory, media theory, pornography
internet research, sexuality studies, popular culture, affect theory, media theory, pornography
Biography
Susanna Paasonen is professor of Media Studies. After finishing her PhD in Media Studies in Turku in 2002 she acted as lecturer in Media Culture at University of Tampere (2003), as Academy of Finland postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Women's Studies in Turku (2004-5), as senior research associate in Digital Culture at University of Jyväskylä (2005-7), as researcher at the Collegium for Advanced Studies at University of Helsinki (2007-10) and as professor of Digital Culture at Jyväskylä (2010-11) before starting in her current post in August 2011. Paasonen was appointed docent in Media Culture at University of Tampere in 2004 and in Feminist Media Studies in Turku in 2006.
She was the first recipient of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters' Jutikkala Award in Humanities in 2011 and was awarded the Association of Internet Researchers' Nancy Baym Annual Book Award in 2020. She spent part of her sabbatical research leave in 2016 as visiting scholar at MIT's department of Comparative Media Studies and at Microsoft Research New England's Social Media Collective, was briefly visiting professor at University of Florence during the COVID-19 spring of 2020, and was a Hunt-Simes Visiting Chair in Sexuality Studies at SSSHARC/ University of Sydney in 2022.
Research
With an interest in studies of networked media, affect, sexuality, and media theory, Paasonen is the PI of the research consortium, "Intimacy in Data-Driven Culture" (IDA, 2019-25) funded by The Strategic Research Council (SRC) at the Research Council of Finland.
She's the author of e.g. Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography (MIT Press 2011), Many Splendored Things: Thinking Sex and Play (Goldsmiths Press 2018), NSFW: Sex, Humor, and Risk in Social Media (with Kylie Jarrett and Ben Light, MITP 2019), Who's Laughing Now? Feminist Tactics in Social Media (with Jenny Sundén, MITP 2020), Objectification: On the Difference Between Sex and Sexism (with Feona Attwood, Alan McKee, John Mercer and Clarissa Smith, Routledge 2020), Distracted, Frustrated, Bored: Affective Formations in Networked Media (MITP 2021), Technopharmacology (with Joshua Neves, Aleena Chia and Ravi Sundaram, University of Minnesota Press 2022) and Yul Brynner: Exoticism, Cosmopolitanism and Screen Masculinity (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).
Paasonen is co-editor of e.g. Pornification: Sex and Sexuality in Media Culture (with Kaarina Nikunen and Laura Saarenmaa, Berg 2007), Working with Affect in Feminist Readings: Disturbing Differences (with Marianne Liljeström, Routledge 2010) and Networked Affect (with Ken Hillis and Michael Petit, MIT Press 2015) and serves on the editorial boards member of the journals New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, Sexualities, Porn Studies, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Postmodern Culture, Capacious, Postmodern Culture, Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, Kvinder, kön och forskning, MedieKultur and Monstrum.
Teaching
Paasonen has broad teaching experience in media studies, cultural studies, digital culture and gender studies. She is in charge of postgraduate studies at the department of Media Studies, and participates in MA teaching and supervision.
Publications
- Dick pics and the shifty meanings of porn (2024)
- Porn Studies
(Article or data-article in scientific journal (B1)) - Memetic commenting: Armenian curses and the Twitter theatre of Trump’s deselection (2024)
- International Journal of Cultural Studies
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1)) - Objectionable nipples: Puritan data politics and sexual agency in social media (2024) Queer Data Studies Paasonen Susanna, Sundén Jenny
(Refereed article in compilation book (A3)) - About sex, open-mindedness and cinnamon buns: Exploring sexual social media (2023)
- Social Media + Society
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1)) - Ambiguous affect: excitements that make the self (2023) The Affect Theory Reader II: Worldings, Tensions, Futures Paasonen Susanna
(Refereed article in compilation book (A3)) - Can We Break the Horizontal Lines of Whorism? (2023)
- Interactions
(Article in trade journal or blog post (D1)) - Conclusion: Shifting Horizons of Possibility (2023) Media Materialities: Form, Format, and Ephemeral Meaning Paasonen Susanna
(Book chapter (B2)) - Golden era, revisited (2023)
- Porn Studies
(Article or data-article in scientific journal (B1)) - Iiu Susiraja: Self-shooting as playful practice (2023) Reconfiguring the Portrait Hynnä-Granberg Kaisu, Paasonen Susanna
(Refereed article in compilation book (A3)) - Intimate Infrastructures We Depend upon: Living with Data (2023)
- Media Theory
(Refereed review article in scientific journal (A2)) - Kinky, leaky, opaque: Sexual intimacies and data (2023)
- Interactions
(Article in trade journal or blog post (D1)) - Local flavour, film fantasies and shifting selections: Finnish sex magazines, 1972–1973 (2023)
- Porn Studies
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1)) - Vanilla normies and fellow pervs: Boundary work on sexual platforms (2023)
- Sexualities
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1)) - Yul Brynner: Exoticism, Cosmopolitanism and Screen Masculinity (2023) Paasonen Susanna
(Refereed scientific book or report (C1)) - Encounter #13 (2022) 25 Encounters Mourad Salim, Paasonen Susanna
(Article in a professional research book (D2)) - Experimentations in pandemic boredom (2022) Methodologies of Affective Experimentation Paasonen Susanna
(Refereed article in compilation book (A3)) - Gag Order on Sexuality in Social Media—A Critical Reading From the Perspective
of Sexual Rights (2022)- International Journal of Sexual Health
(Other (O2)) - Locating sex: regional geographies of sexual social media (2022)
- Gender, Place and Culture
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1)) - “Natalie Wood Day”: Sexual Violence and Celebrity Remembrance in the #MeToo Era (2022)
- Celebrity Studies
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1)) - Nipples, memes, and algorithmic failure: NSFW critique of Tumblr censorship (2022)
- New Media and Society
(Refereed journal article or data article (A1))