Prof Patrik Wikstrom

Professor of Computational Communication

Doctor of Philosophy Subject Media and Communication Studies (Karlstad University)

I am a Professor of Computational Communication, Chief Investigator in QUT's Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC) and Associate Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society (ADM+S).

Computational communication is an interdisciplinary field that integrates theories and methods from communication studies and data science to analyze communication processes, cultural dynamics, and social interactions at scale. My research explores how technology shapes the creation, circulation, curation, and experience of short-form, time-based culture—particularly at the intersection of music culture and meme culture. Most of my empirical work examines actors and phenomena emerging on mainstream music platforms such as Spotify, Deezer, and SoundCloud, as well as short-video platforms such as YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram Reels.

I publish my research in books and journals, such as the monographs “TikTok - Creativity and culture in short video” (with Bondy Kaye & Jing Zeng) and “The Music Industry: Music in the Cloud” (3rd ed). My journal-based work is published in Information Economics and Policy, Social Media + Society, Technovation, Convergence, Int’l Journal of Comm, Economic Inquiry, etc.

Previously I have held several academic leadership positions, including Director of the QUT Digital Media Research Centre, Associate Dean Research in QUT’s Creative Industries Faculty and (founding) Head of the School of Communication at QUT. I have served as a faculty member at Northeastern University (Boston, USA), Jonkoping International Business School (Jonkoping, Sweden) and Karlstad University (Karlstad, Sweden). I received my Ph.D. from Karlstad University in Media and Communication Studies and I am an MScEng graduate from Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden). Before my academic career, I worked in the European media and telecom industry where I held positions in business development and strategy consulting.

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