Susanna Paasonen
Professor of Media Studies
suspaa@utu.fi +358 29 450 3429 +358 50 328 9613 Arcanuminkuja 1 Turku |
internet research, critical sexuality studies, affect inquiry, media theory, popular culture
I'm professor of Media Studies and head of department. After finishing my PhD in 2002 I worked at universities of Tampere, Helsinki and Jyväskylä before starting in my current post in 2011. I've been visiting scholar/profesor at MIT and Microsoft Research New England's Social Media Collective (2016), University of Florence (2020) and University of Sydney (2022).
I'm broadly interested in media culture and my recent book projects range from social media inquiry to cinema history in e.g., Who's Laughing Now? Feminist Tactics in Social Media (with Jenny Sundén, MIT Press 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). Hot Connections: Why Sexual Platforms Matter, co-authored with Sundén and Katrin Tiidenberg, is forthcoming from MITP in 2026.
I serve on the editorial boards member of the journals New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, Sexualities, Porn Studies, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Dialogues on Digital Society, Postmodern Culture, Capacious, Postmodern Culture, Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, Kvinder, kön och forskning, MedieKultur and Monstrum.
I have taught courses on media studies, cultural studies, digital culture and gender studies since 1998. I'm in charge of Media Studies' postgraduate studies, participate in MA supervision, and teach also at BA level.
- Intime Abhängigkeiten, fragile Verbindungen, entsexualisierte Plattformen (2021)
- Sexuologie
- “Old dirty pops and young hot chicks”: Age differences in pornographic fantasies (2021) Gender and sexuality in the European Media: Exploring Different Contexts through Conceptualisations of Age Paasonen Susanna
- Patterns within Grids: A review of Tom Roach, Screen Love: Queer Intimacies in the Grindr Era. SUNY Press, 2021 (2021)
- Postmodern Culture
- Pornokreuzzüge und emotionals Plattformpolitik (2021)
- WestEnd: neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung
- Pornolehdet sateenkaarihistorian aineistona (2021)
- Sateenkaarihistorian ystävien kirjoituksia
- Pornon karvat ja karvan muodit (2021)
- Sukupuolentutkimus - Genusforskning
- Sex in the shadows of celebrity (2021)
- Porn Studies
- Sexual Objects, Sexual Subjects and Certified Freaks. Rethinking “Objectification” (2021)
- Mai: feminism & visual culture
- Social Networking Sites’ Gag Order: Commercial Content Moderation’s Adverse Implications for Fundamental Sexual Rights and Wellbeing (2021)
- Social Media + Society
- Someta, tutkija? (2021)
- Acatiimi
- SPACE, PLACE AND LOCATION IN SEXUAL SOCIAL MEDIA (2021)
- AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
- The Deep Realness of Deepfake Pornography (2021) Deep Mediations: Thinking Space in Cinema and Digital Cultures McGlotten Shaka, Paasonen Susanna, Stadler John Paul
- The value of print, the value of porn (2021)
- Porn Studies
- “We have tiny purses in our vaginas!!! #thanksforthat”: absurdity as a feminist method of intervention (2021)
- Qualitative Research Journal
- "We watch porn for the fucking, not for romantic tiptoeing": extremity, fantasy and women’s porn use (2021)
- Porn Studies
- Affect (2020) The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication Paasonen Susanna
- Distracted Present, Golden Past? (2020)
- Media Theory
- Gender, Identity, and (the Limits of) Play on the Internet (2020) Feministische Theorie und Kritische Medienkulturanalyse: Ausgangspunkte und Perspektiven Paasonen Susanna
- Mediating Presents (2020)
- Media Theory
- Objectification: On the Difference between Sex and Sexism (2020) Paasonen Susanna, Attwood Feona, McKee Alan, Mercer John, Smith Clarissa