Mercè Oliva (UPF)

Operación Triunfo, celebrity culture and precarity

Just chavs? The media portrayal of young working-class women

Long live to the middle-class! (Salvados, La Sexta)

Chonis, canis and ninis: Stereotypes and media portrayals of young working-class people

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I am an Associate Professor and Serra Húnter Fellow in Media Studies and Popular Culture in the Department of Communication at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where I have been working as a researcher and lecturer since 2006. Currently, I am Director of the B.A. programme in Audiovisual Communication (Film and Media), the Coordinator of UNIC (funded and recognized as Consolidated Research Group by AGAUR, 2021 SGR 00921) and member of the Medium Research Group.

I hold a PhD on Social Communication (UPF, 2010) and a BA on Audiovisual Communication (UPF, 2002). My research interests are television, media, popular culture and celebrity studies. Specifically, I am interested in the study of gender and class stereotypes in reality TV and celebrity gossip media, as well as the connections between popular culture and neoliberal values. I am also interested in video games and political communication (particularly politainment and celebritization of politics).

I am Principal Investigator of the European research project Redistributive Imaginaries: Digitization, Culture, and Prosocial
Contribution (REDIGIM), funded by MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033/NextGenerationEU/PRTR (Ref.: PCI2022-135059-2, 2022-2025), under the CHANSE Cofund 2021 programme. Previously, I led, along with Óliver Pérez-Latorre, the research project "Heroes of the crisis: Narrative and social discourse in contemporary popular culture" (CSO2014-56830-P, 2014-2019), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO).

I have published several articles in academic journals such as Convergence, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Celebrity Studies, Games and Culture, Social Semiotics and Comunicar and I am the author of Telerrealidad, disciplina e identidad: Los makeover shows en España [Reality TV, Discipline and Identity: Makeover Shows in Spain) (Ed. UOC, 2013).