Emily Hund

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Social media researcher and consultant Emily Hund explains how the passion and authenticity of early digital bloggers spawned a profit-driven communications industry in which people we perceive as ‘real’ have learned to exploit authenticity.

Hund says that before Instagram, Twitter hashtags and TikTok there were bloggers who had the passion and authenticity that traditional media lacked. They found a way to create personal brands and make money out of them as a way of having control of their professional lives at a time of great uncertainty. Hund explains how the methods they used have now permeated our lives and led to unforeseen cultural and economic costs.

Hund is a research affiliate at the Center on Digital Culture and Society at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and a consultant to industry, academic, and government groups. She has written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the Guardian.

Part of the festival’s programme of American literature and culture.