Christine H. Tran
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Christine H. Tran is a PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. Attending to the creator economy, their work examines how live video platforms—from Twitch.tv to TikTok and Zoom—transform our experiences of leisure, labour, and love in the home. Christine has held fellowship appointments as the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative, the Centre for Culture and Technology, and Massey College.
Supervisor
Nicole Cohen
Publications
- Tran, C. H. (2023). “Making up over Zoom: An Autoethnography of Streaming in/as Media Scholarship.” JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 62(4), 167-173. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2023.a904633.
- Jacob, A. & Tran, C. H. H (2023). How We Learned to Stop SWAT-ing and Love the (Zoom Bomb: A (De)Predatory History of Disrupting the Livestream. In J. Brewer, B. Ruberg, A. L. L. Cullen & C. Persaud, (Eds.) Real Life in Real Time: Live Streaming Culture (pp. 101-116). MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14526.003.0011.
- Hewa, N. & Tran, C. H. (2023). “Verified Play, Precarious Work: GamerGate and Platformed Authenticity in the Cultural Industries.” New Media & Society. OnlineFirst. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231158387.
- Tran, C. H. (2022). “‘Never Battle Alone’: Egirls & the Gender(ed) War on Video Game Live Streaming as ‘Real’ Work.” Television & New Media, 23(5), 509-520. https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764221080930.
- Tran, C. H., & Bergstrom, K. (2022). How to Incorporate Feminist and Postcolonial Perspectives in Games Research. In M. Currie (Ed.), SAGE Research Methods: Doing Research Online. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781529610864.
- Tran, C. H. (2021) “Stream(age) Dreams: Zoom-Bombs, Glitter Bombs & Other Doctoral Fairy-Tales.” Communication, Culture & Critique, 14(2), 356-360. https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcab028.
Research
Christine's SSHRC-funded dissertation explores the working conditions of racialized and gendered creators on Amazon’s juggernaut game streaming platform, Twitch.tv. Through ethnographic inquiry, Christine document the interrelation of domestic leisure and platform labour. They trace how the fraught legacy of digital housekeeping—from women’s unequal access to home studios to the unpaid spousal labour of technology workers’ families—represents a critical site for the negotiation of workers’ labour power amidst the platformization of entertainment in Canada and the US.