On 8 December 2018, Christopher Haworth gave the keynote address at the joint RMA/BFE study day Music and the Internet.

The event was framed around Haworth and Prof Georgina Born’s joint article: From Microsound to Vaporwave: Internet-Mediated Music, Online Methods, and Genre and sought to ‘foster dialogue between  musicologists and ethnomusicologists who are interested in the online mediation of music and novel methodological approaches that support its study’.

Dr Haworth’s keynote address ‘“Can you Break the Internet?” Notes towards a theory of internet-mediation in music’ argued that, in focusing on the internet as a communications medium, the media-historical literature has ignored the creative and aesthetic practices that increasingly contribute to its social meaning. Instead, Haworth argued for historically and ethnographically-informed close media analysis that keeps in the view the continual back-and-forth between technological ‘grammars’ and their cultures of use. 

Christopher Haworth