Headshot of Dr.Malcolm Ogden

Dr. Malcolm Ogden

Visiting Assistant Professor of Rhetoric & Communication Studies
Curriculum Vitae

  • Profile

    Malcolm Ogden is a media scholar whose research focuses on the interrelations of digital media, bodily sensation, and capitalist political economy. Recent work of his has looked at the labor of “fragrance influencers” and the mediation of olfaction; the role of linguistic suggestion in self-hypnosis and ASMR videos; the various forms of military/media escalation seen surrounding remote-work during and following the COVID-19 global pandemic; and, the weird aesthetics of YouTube and TikTok as embodied by urban exploration videos, Skibidi Toilet, the backrooms, and other associated phenomena. His work frequently draws on Marxist and feminist theories of labor; materialist media theory; literary and philosophical work on aesthetics; and cultural historical work on media and technology. 

    Ogden is currently in the early stages of a book project based on his dissertation, which he defended in May 2024. This project considers TikTok and YouTube as sites of emergent cultural and aesthetic practices tied to changes in the capitalist mode of production. In relatively affluent postindustrial societies, wherein the screens and speakers of mobile computational devices are often close at hand, the notion that one's everyday life might be improved by simply adding audiovisual media as a kind of accompaniment has emerged as a guiding principle for much cultural and aesthetic practice. "Ambient form," as he theorizes it, involves both this pervasive notion of a "useful" commingling of specific kinds of audiovisual "content" with viewer-listeners' embodied everyday experiences (e.g., the intentional use of ASMR videos to achieve better sleep, or of white noise videos to block out distracting sounds and achieve better focus), as well as the more unintended and ambiguous characteristics of audiovisual media online stemming from the machinic dimensions of platform architectures and the epistemological ambiguities of bodily-sensation.

    Expand All
    • Presentations

      Ogden, Malcolm. (2026). "Private Taxi for My Burrito:" Klarna, DoorDash, and the Dubious Luxury of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) Platforms." Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) Annual Conference, Chicago, March 26-29, 2026. 

      Ogden, Malcolm. (2025). "AI, grammar, and consciousness: A media genealogical analysis of Grammarly." 50th Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S): Reverberations, Seattle, September 3-6, 2025.

      Ogden, Malcolm. (2024). "The Legacy of the New Age on/as Online Video Platforms: An Analysis of CrystalTok." Association of Internet Researchers (AOIR) Conference,  Sheffield, November 2024. 

      Ogden, Malcolm. (2023). "'You're going to have to buy into this a little:' On Suggestion and Sensation in ASMR and Self-Hypnosis Videos on YouTube and TikTok." Literature/Film Association Conference, University of Montana, September 2023.

      Ogden, Malcolm. (2022). "Monstrous Toys and Sensory Play on TikTok." Association of Internet Researchers (AOIR) Conference, Dublin, November 2022.

      Ogden, Malcolm. (2022). "LEGOfied Sound." Society for the Social Studies of Sciences (4S) Conference, University of Toronto, October 2021. 

      Ogden, Malcolm. (2021). "'Relaxing Sounds of An Oil Platform:' On the Eerie Pleasures of Networked Video." Popular/American Culture Association Conference, June 2021.

      Ogden, Malcolm. (2021). "The Platformization of Fragrance." Making Sense: A Humanities Symposium, Rice University, March 2021. 

      Ogden, Malcolm. (2021). "'I'll drive you home, you just sleep by the side:' Ambience, Infrastructure, and Networked Video." Southwest Popular/American Culture (SWPACA) Conference, February 2021. 

      Ogden, Malcolm. (2020). "Encountering the Alien Subject of AI: Instagram Stories and Algorithmic Recommendation." CRDM Research Symposium, March 2020. [Event canceled due to COVID-19]

      Ogden, Malcolm. (2016). "The Literacy Myth and Corporate Colonialism: An Analysis of Mark Zuckerberg's 'Is Connectivity a Human Right?'" AEGS @ NCSU Symposium, March 2016.

  • Publications
    Journal Articles

    Refereed Articles

    Ogden, Malcolm. (2025). "'ASMR NPC:' On Digital Possession and Video Streaming." Media Theory. (Accepted)

    Ogden, Malcolm. (2025). "'The Dildo of the Fragrance Industry:' On Fragrance Influencers and Mediated Sensation." Post45, Special Cluster, "Influencer Aesthetics." (Accepted)

    Ogden, Malcolm. (2024). "Perfumed Platforms, or The Common Scents of Post-Fordism." Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 21(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2024.2376366

    Ogden, Malcolm. (2024). "Package wars and mouse movers: on the media escalation of remote-work during the COVID-19 global pandemic." Culture, Theory and Critique. https://doi.org/10.1080/14735784.2023.2299468

    Ogden, Malcolm. (2023). "LEGOfied Sound: On the Labor and Leisure of 'LEGO White Noise.'" Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture  4:2. https://doi.org/10.1525/res.2023.4.2.158

    Book Chapters

    Ogden, Malcolm. (2025). “The Weird Internet and Digital Sensation.” In The De Gruyter Handbook of Digital Cultures, eds. Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, and Yigit Soncul (Berlin, DE: De Gruyter). (Forthcoming)

    Additional Publications

    Peer-Reviewed Conference Proceedings

    Ogden, M. K., Eapen, G., Singha, S., Howard, M., & Nizaruddin, F. (2025). THE PRECARITY, PERILS, AND PROMISES OF EMERGING CREATOR ECONOMIES. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2024i0.14097 

    Ogden, M. K., Eapen, G., Dial, A., Baker, M., & Glover-Rijkse, R. (2023). PLATFORMING VIBES: TECHNICAL, INTIMATE, AND POLITICAL PRACTICES OF THE EVERYDAY. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2022i0.12964

    Editing

    McKelvey, F, Packer J, and Reeves, J. (2022). "AI and the Automation of Warfare." Canadian Journal of Communication 47(2): 377-398. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2022v47n2a4303

    Reviews

    Ogden, Malcolm. (2025). "Cybernetic Circulation Complex: Big Tech and Planetary Crisis." AI & Society. (Under revision) 

    Ogden, Malcolm. (2023). "The Prison House of the Circuit: Politics of Control from Analog to Digital." New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231187114

    Ogden, Malcolm. (2020). "Killer apps: war, media, machine." Critical Studies in Media Communication 37:5, 514-518. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2020.1814118 a Communication 37:5, 514-518. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2020.1814118

  • Links
    Personal Website