Dr Stefania Vicari

BA, MA, PhD, FHEA

Department of Sociological Studies

Senior Lecturer in Digital Sociology

Research Lead and Executive Board member, Sheffield Cancer Research

A photo of Stefania Vicari
Profile picture of A photo of Stefania Vicari
s.vicari@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 6452
My office hours are on Tuesday. You can book an appointment via my calendar under links.

Full contact details

Dr Stefania Vicari
Department of Sociological Studies
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
Profile

Stefania joined the Department in September 2016 as a Senior Lecturer in Digital Sociology. Prior to this, she was a Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Leicester (2011-2016) and a Lecturer in Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes at the University of Sassari, Italy, (2009-2010).

Stefania’s background sits at the intersection of sociology and media and communication studies, drawing on a highly international HE journey. She was awarded a BA in Communication Sciences (Summa cum laude) from the University of Torino (Italy), an MA in Globalization and Communications (Distinction) from the University of Leicester (UK) and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Reading (UK), having spent her last doctoral year as a visiting scholar at Emory University (USA).

Research interests

Stefania’s research focuses on participatory cultures, lived experiences of health and illness and methodological innovation. Her work has been funded by the British Academy (2012), the Wellcome Trust (2013; 2016), the ESRC (2018) and the Leverhulme Trust (2022). 

Participatory cultures:

Stefania has explored mundane social media practices of ‘talking politics’. Her work in this field has focused on deliberative processes in the contexts of the early 2000s Global Justice Movement, World Social Forum and Cuban blogosphere. She has also investigated several issue publics on the Italian and English Twitter, contributing, for instance, to scholarship on the role of social media content in pandemic discourses (e.g., were Covid-19 memes political communication?).

Social media and lived experiences of health and illness:

Stefania is a research lead and Executive Board member of Sheffield Cancer Research, co-directing its theme ‘Patient experience and voice’.

Stefania is interested in everyday digital media practices of self-care, patient advocacy, lay understandings of health and illness and health activism. Her work has provided evidence of the  importance of social media for rare diseases patients and is currently exploring social media affordances for individuals with hereditary cancer syndromes (e.g., how do social media influence how we understand and experience illness?).

Digital methods for cultural research:

Stefania uses a range of methodological techniques informed by network theory, textual analysis (frame analysis, critical discourse analysis) and visual methods. She is specifically interested in developing combinations of ‘quanti’ and ‘quali’ methodological steps in digital methods designs (e.g., how do we research local cultures through global platforms?).

Publications

Books

Journal articles

Chapters

Book reviews

  • Vicari S (2014) "Book Review: Sharing Our Lives Online: Risks and Exposure in Social Media by David R. Brake." LSE Review of books. LSE Review of books. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Vicari S (2014) "Book review: transnationalizing the public sphere by Nancy Fraser et al." LSE Review of books. LSE Review of books. RIS download Bibtex download

Conference proceedings papers

Other

  • Vicari S (2019) "Do social media companies undervalue the expertise of online communities?" LSE Impact blog. LSE Impact Blog. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Vicari S (2016) "Career opportunities in digital media". Deccan Herald. Deccan Herald. RIS download Bibtex download
Research group

Digital Media and Society research area

Science, Technology and Medicine in Society (STeMiS)

Sheffield Cancer Research

Postgraduate supervision

Stefania has examined doctoral candidates in the UK and abroad, having herself supervised the following PhD students to completion.

  • Jantiga Supapong, “More performing, less protesting: Exploring the mediated political engagement of Thai middle classes”;
  • Zheng Yang, “Citizen Science Communicators, Boundary-Work and Scientific Authority: Struggle for Discourse Authority between Scientists and the Public in the Digital Media Environment of China”;
  • Semra Demirdis, “Hashtag activism? The role of Twitter hashtags during the 15th July ‘coup attempt’ in Turkey”;
  • Nuha Almohammadi, “Understandings and Experiences of Sports, Physical Activity and Related Digital Campaigning Among Saudi Young Women in Saudi Arabia”.

She is currently supervising:

Grants

2022-2025: Leverhulme Trust, Research project grants scheme. Project Awarded: 'Previvorship in the platform society: Cancer genetic risk in the digital age’ (Principal Investigator). [Grant Ref. RPG-2021-152]

2018-2021: ESRC Project Awarded: 'Sustainable Consumption, the Middle Classes and Agri-food Ethics in the Global South’ (co-Investigator. Principal Investigator: Alex Hughes). [Grant Ref. ES/R005303/1]

2016-2017: Wellcome Trust, Society and Ethics Small Grants Scheme. Project Awarded: 'Twitting rare diseases on and off the "Jolie effect": A study of Twitter affordances for health public debate’ (Principal Investigator). [Grant Ref. 200223/Z/15/Z]

2016-2017: University of Leicester REF-Research Impact Development Fund Scheme. Project Awarded: 'Developing the Rare disease epatient multi-project research as an impact case study'.

2013-1014: Wellcome Trust, Society and Ethics Small Grants Scheme. Project Awarded: 'Bridging the gap between patients and carers: The case of rare disease patient-advocacy actors' (Principal Investigator). [Grant Ref: 101785/Z/13/Z].

2012-2013: British Academy, Small Research Grants scheme. Project awarded: 'The Cuban blogosphere: A leak of voice from an authoritarian regime to a global public' (Principal Investigator). [Grant Ref: SG112222].

Teaching activities

Stefania is currently convening the postgraduate core module SCS6081 Digital Methods, having previously taught on a broad range of sociological and media communication modules across levels, programmes, institutions and countries.

From 2020 to 2024, Stefania was the Pathway Director for Data, Communication and New Technologies with the White Rose Social Sciences Doctoral Training Partnership.

From 2016 to 2020, she was the Programme Director of the newly born MA Digital Media and Society, also designing and convening the programme's core modules "Researching Digital Society", "Digital Methods" and "Dissertation is Digital Media and Society".

Professional activities and memberships

Stefania has been a member of the British Sociological Association, the International Communication Association, the European Communication Research and Education Association and the Association of Internet Researchers.

She is an Associate Editor of Information, Communication & Society and has been part of the Editorial board of Sociology since 2018.

She has been a member of the Grant Assessment Panel B (Sociology) of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) since September 2022.

She has acted as a research grant peer reviewer for national and international fundings bodies, like the ESRC, Wellcome Trust, Volkswagen Foundation, Swiss National Science Foundation and MIUR (Ministry of Education, University and Research, Italy).

She has acted as a peer reviewer for a range of academic journals, among which American Journal of Sociology, Information, Communication and Society, Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, Mobilization, New Media and Society, Social Media + Society, Social Movement Studies, Social Networks, Sociological Inquiry and Sociology.

She has worked as an external examiner for the MA Communication and Media at the University of Leeds (2017-2021) and the MA Digital Media and Society at the University of Leicester (2021 - 2022).

Partnerships, engagement and impact

Stefania’s past and current research on rare diseases and cancer has developed in interaction with advocacy and patient organisations, seeing this interaction as a means to understand what matters to patients. For instance, following conversations with patient representatives from Lynch Syndrome UK and Lynch Syndrome Ireland, Stefania’s project ‘Previvorship’ has developed an interactive animation meant to provide accessible information about Lynch Syndrome, a hereditary cancer condition. 

Stefania’s work has been featured at Off the Shelf Festival of words and in the LSE Impact Blog.