Congratulations to PhD student Julia Jeonghyun Parke, a top 20 finalist in the SSHRC’s 2024 Storytellers Challenge.
This annual contest challenges postsecondary students to show Canadians, in up to three minutes, how social sciences and humanities research is affecting our lives, our world and our future for the better.
For her research, Parke tracks the activities of virtual influencers, computer-generated characters with fictional names, faces and backstories who do the work of social media influencers. Who is making virtual influencers? Why are they doing it? What’s going to happen now that generative AI makes it easy for anyone to make their own virtual influencer? Specifically, Parke investigates why creators tend to make virtual influencers who are young women of colour – especially when many of the creators themselves are male and often of different racial identities.
The top five winners of the 2024 Storytellers Challenge will be announced in May.
Watch Speculating Race: Creator Motivations for Designing Virtual Influencers of Colour on YouTube
