Dr Teodor Mitew is an Associate Professor in Digital Media and Communication, and a Director of Research at the School of International Communications, University of Nottingham Ningbo, China.

Previously, Dr Teodor Mitew was a Discipline Leader in the Creative Industries, and a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Communication at the School of the Arts, English and Media, University of Wollongong, Australia.

Dr Teodor Mitew's research expertise spans the areas of online extremism, swarming and distributed networks, meme warfare, the internet of things, smart clothing, and philosophy of technology.

Dr Teodor Mitew is an invited member of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism. He has acted as external consultant for startups and non-profits, and has been sought after as expert for newspapers, radio, TV and online magazines.

Background

My research background is in actor network theory, internet studies and digital media. 

Research focus

My research interests are in distributed networks, information warfare, the internet of things, and complex systems. 

Projects

My current research projects are clustered around three distinct vectors:

1] the internet of things and smart clothing;

2] swarming, distributed networks and meme warfare;

3] object oriented ontology and anticipatory materiality.

Profiles

Google Scholar  II Academia II Researchgate II ORCID II SCOPUS

Supervision

I am interested in supervising research projects across the following areas: on/offline swarming, meme warfare, meme culture, anonymous online groups, dynamic reframing, online extremism, distributed collaboration, blockchains and crypto culture, the internet of things, smart clothing, the internet of bodies, philosophy of technology, actor network theory, object oriented ontology.

Publications

You can find an up to date list of my publications, draft papers, and talks on my Academia page.

Co-authored books

Mitew, T., et al. (2019) 100 Atmospheres: Studies in Scale and Wonder, London: Open Humanities Press.

Book Chapters

Mitew, T. (2019) ‘Comparative hierophany at three object scales’. In Mitew, T., et al.  100 Atmospheres: Studies in Scale and Wonder, London: Open Humanities Press.

Mitew, T., Moore, C. (2017) ‘Histories of Internet Games and Play: Space, Technique, and Modality’. In Goggin, G. and McLelland, M. (Eds.) The Routledge Companion to Global Internet Histories, London: Routledge.

Mitew, T., Celetti, M., Leong, S., Pearson, E. (2012). ‘The Question Concerning (Internet) Time’. In Hughes, J. (Ed.) SAGE Internet Research Methods, SAGE Publications.

Peer-reviewed journal articles

Mitew, T. (2021) ‘Deplatforming and Adaptation: Similarities between Religious and Ideological Extremism’, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 2021 (May, 24), https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2021/05/24/deplatforming-and-adaptation-similarities-between-religious-and-ideological-extremism/

Mitew, T., Foroughi, J., Raad, R., Safaei, F. (2020) ‘Advances in Wearable Sensors: Signaling the Provenance of Garments Using Radio Frequency Watermarks’, Sensors 2020, 20 (22), 6661. https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/20/22/6661

Mitew, T., Wall, T. (2018) ‘Swarm networks and the design process of a distributed meme warfare campaign’, First Monday, vol.23 (5), May 2018. http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/8290/7202

Mitew, T., Shehabat, A. (2018) ‘Black-boxing the Black Flag: Anonymous Sharing Platforms and ISIS Content Distribution Tactics’, Perspectives on Terrorism, vol.12 (1), p. 81-99. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26343748#metadata_info_tab_contents

Mitew, T., Shehabat, A. (2017) ‘Distributed Swarming and Stigmergic Effects on ISIS Networks: OODA Loop Model’, Journal of Media and Warfare, vol.10, Dec 2017, p.79-109. https://ir.uitm.edu.my/id/eprint/39584/

Shehabat, A., Mitew, T., Alzoubi, Y. (2017) ‘Encrypted Jihad: Investigating the Role of the Telegram App in Lone Wolf Attacks in the West’, Journal of Strategic Security, vol.10, no.3 (2017): 27-53. https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol10/iss3/3/

Mitew, T., Foroughi, J., Ogunbona, P., Raad, R., Safaei, F. (2016) ‘Smart Fabrics and Networked Clothing’, IEEE Consumer Electronics, vol.5, no.4, 2016. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7574428

Mitew, T., Ballard, S., Law, J., Stirling, J. (2016) ‘Data natures: the politics and aesthetics of prediction’, International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA 2016), Hong Kong, China. https://isea-archives.siggraph.org/presentation/data-natures-the-politics-and-aesthetics-of-prediction/

Mitew, T. (2014) ‘Do Objects Dream of an Internet of Things?’ Fibreculture Journal, 2014 (23), http://twentythree.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-168-do-objects-dream-of-an-internet-of-things/

Mitew, T., Celetti, M., Leong, S., Pearson, E. (2009) ‘The Question Concerning (Internet) Time’, New Media & Society, 2009, 11: 1267-1285. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1461444809349159

Mitew, T. (2008) ‘Repopulating the Map: Why Subjects and Things Are Never Alone’, Fibreculture Journal, 2008 (13), https://thirteen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-089-repopulating-the-map-why-subjects-and-things-are-never-alone/

Mitew, T. (2006) ‘Shaping Things’ Resource Centre for Cyberculture Studies (July 2006) http://rccs.usfca.edu/bookinfo.asp?ReviewID=396&BookID=323

Mitew, T. (2005) ‘Beta-Utopian Order’, M/C Journal, 7(6), https://journal.media-culture.org.au/mcjournal/article/view/2469

Mitew, T. (2002) ‘Anti-representational History’, Historyka, vol. XXXII, 54-79.

Refereed conference papers

Mitew, T. (2019) ‘How to trust a sweater: object provenance in smart clothing’, Association of Internet Researchers 2019 Conference (AOIR 2019), Brisbane, Australia.

Mitew, T., Wall, T. (2017) ‘Swarm networks and the design process of a distributed meme warfare campaign’, International Association of Media and Communications Research (IAMCR 2017), Bogota, Colombia.

Mitew, T., Shehabat, A. (2016) ‘Black-Boxing the Black Flag: Anonymous Sharing Platforms and ISIS Content Distribution Tactics’, The Asian Conference on Media & Mass Communication (MediAsia 2016), Kobe, Japan.

Mitew, T. (2016) ‘Object Hierophanies and the Mode of Anticipation’, International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA 2016), Hong Kong, China.

Mitew, T., O’Donnell, M., McDonald, F., Cairns, N. (2016) ‘Makerspaces and the remaking of higher education’, Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA 2016), Fremantle, Australia.

Mitew, T. (2012) ‘From the Internet of Things to Sociable Objects’, Internet Technologies & Society, International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS 2012), Perth, Australia.

Mitew, T. (2011) ‘Do objects dream of an internet of things: re-locating the social in ambient socio-digital systems’, Cities, Creativity, Connectivity, International Association of Media and Communications Research (IAMCR 2011), Istanbul, Turkey.

Mitew, T. (2007) ‘Durable affinities: timing and spacing the public,’ Strange Attractors: Unpredictable Combinations in Historical and Cultural Contexts, Limina Conference 2007, University of Western Australia, Perth.

Mitew, T. (2006) ‘Opening the Black Box: the political potential of tactical network cartography,’ Internet Research 7.0: Internet Convergences, Association of Internet Researchers Annual Conference, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane.

Mitew, T. (2005) ‘The Internet and the Evolution of Activism: movements, campaigns, adhocracies,’ Other Worlds: Social Movements and the Making of Alternatives, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney.

PhD Supervision completions

• Travis Holland: Participatory Media and Local Government in Australia
• Ahmad Shehabat: Beyond Twitter Revolutions: the digital media logistics of terror communication networks in Iraq and Syria 2014-2016
• Travis Wall: Design Thinking as Heterogeneous Engineering
• Owen Godfrey: Labyrinth: diegetic cues and the formation of player actions and behavior in digital games

My teaching philosophy, which I’ve outlined elsewhere, falls within the parameters of constructivism, where the role of the educator is that of facilitator of knowledge creation as opposed to a fountain of authority and wisdom. In the context of my area, I understand knowledge creation as a variety of publicly available online activities based on content production, aggregation, and curation. The processes of production, aggregation and curation on the open net are the key elements of professional media practice, and involve continuous and iterative feedback loops entangled with iterative reflection.

My courses, assessments, and learning outcomes are focused on self-driven learning practice organized around publicly available digital artefacts and the open source work model of release early/release often. 

I explain these concepts in the mini-lectures below:

Developing Digital Artefacts

Fail Early, Fail Often #fefo

Fast, Inexpensive, Simple, Tiny #fist

Current and past teaching

I have been working in academia for well over a decade, and am currently an Associate Professor in Digital Media & Communication at the University of Nottingham in Ningbo, China. Before that, I was a Discipline Leader in the Creative Industries and Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Communication at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

Currently, I convene and teach the following modules at the University of Nottingham in Ningbo, China:

Communication and Technology

Digital Cultures

While at the University of Wollongong, I coordinated and taught the following subjects [2021]:

BCM112 Emergent Media

BCM114 Making Media

BCM206 Future Networks

BCM302 Advanced Digital Media Project

In my previous academic incarnations I have also taught at Curtin University of Technology [2004-2010], and University of Western Australia [2009-2010], where I covered a wide range of subjects within digital media and communication studies. The list below includes subjects I’ve thought and coordinated before, delivered across three universities as well as partially or wholly online.

DIGC310 Digital Game Cultures

COMM1101 Human Technology: Debating Communication

MCAA104 Engaging Media

NET204 Internet Communities and Social Networks

NET206/506 Web Publishing

NET395 Network Culture and the Virtual Society

New Media Narratives 310

NET505 Current Issues and Developments in ICTs