Saskia Kowalchuk

Thesis supervisor: Dr. Fenwick McKelvey

Thesis title: Put a finger down if you’re trying to get famous on this clock app: Critical Perspectives on the Cultural Production of Memes in the Era of TikTok (proposed title)

Saskia is a second year Master’s student whose research focuses on memes, participatory cultures, and their intersection with platforms. In the past this has allowed her to work on the function of memes within partisan spaces online as artifacts of political communication and on the formal technique of “deep frying” memes as a meta-commentary on memetic communication, which she presented at the 2018 Association of Internet Researcher’s conferences.

For her thesis, she is focusing on TikTok as a new horizon of memetic production, where participatory cultures meet algorithmic cultures and raise important questions about labour, attribution, and compensation.

Saskia completed her BA in Communication and Cultural Studies at Concordia, and is a proud recipient of both SSHRC and FRQSC funding for her thesis research.

Peer reviewed articles:

• McKelvey, F., Donovan, E., Kowalchuk, S., DeJong, S. (In press). Mapping the Canadian network media system through image clustering. Canadian Journal of Communications.
• McKelvey, F., Lalancette, M., Kowalchuk, S., Fitzbay, F. (2021). Les mèmes politiques commes nouveau discours critique [Manuscript submitted for publication]. University of Québec Press.
• Kowalchuk, S. (2017). Man, Medium and the World About: Reflections on the Nature of Web Art vis-a-vis Twitter’s @Horse_ebooks. Medium: Concordia University’s Undergraduate Journal of Communications and Cultural Studies, 5, 4–7.

Non-peer reveiwed articles:

• Kowalchuk, S. (2020). Skipping Policy Steps. The Great Canadian Encyclopedia of Political Memes. https://www.politicalmemes.ca/skipping-steps/
• Kowalchuk, S. (2020, August 4). Memeing About Black Lives Matter. Algorithmic Media Observatory. https://www.amo-oma.ca/en/2020/08/04/memeing-about-black-lives-matter/

In progess:

• DeJong, S & Kowalchuk, S. (2021). Political Memes During COVID-19: Using a qualitative ethnographic approach to explore political meme conversation during the Pandemic.

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