Digital Cultures and Economies Lab

Today, the social internet is fully plumbed out with payments and other financial services. What were once niche practices have become part of popular economic culture: meme coins and meme stocks purchased through gamified investing apps, buy-now-pay-later platforms integrated into e-commerce sites, sports betting apps that reconfigure sports media, and payment systems enabling new forms of hustle economy.

As more and more livelihoods are being enfolded into the digital economy, more and more people rely on fintech platforms to receive payments, manage income, access credit, navigate algorithmic monetization systems, and sustain economic viability in precarious platformized markets. Fintech is not just a tool for financial transactions but a structuring force that shapes who can participate in the economy and under what conditions. The terms of this participation have changed underneath our feet, and many people of all ages feel unprepared to maneuver through it.

We are in the middle of a major reworking of our technological, social, and economic norms and expectations. We need to understand these changes, why they are happening, and how we should react to them.

Current Research

Network Scams Project

This project seeks to understand how scams are becoming increasingly central to understanding contemporary digital economic life. Moving beyond individual-level fraud prevention, this work aims to make visible how scams and anti-scam measures co-evolve with communication technologies, informing policy debates about platform governance, digital payments infrastructure, and the future of economic participation in an era where boundaries between legitimate opportunity and scam increasingly dissolve. Our first publication was Scam GPT: GenAI and the Automation of Fraud, a collaboration with Data + Society.

FLING: Financial Lives in a Networked Generation

Funded by Thriving Youth in the Digital Environment, this project examines how young people develop financial subjectivities and practices within today's complex digital economy—navigating finfluencers, crypto assets, buy-now-pay-later platforms, and more. Moving beyond traditional financial literacy measures, the research investigates emergent practices and competencies that might foster resilience and well-being, aiming to inform policy interventions and educational programs for an increasingly platformized and financialized economic landscape. Read the FLING Report →

The Online Small Business

This project examines how technological is transforming the conditions of small business ownership and micro-entrepreneurship, reshaping what owners do, what skills they need, and what systems they depend on. As social media, AI, fintech, and operational platforms become constitutive rather than merely instrumental to running a business, this research investigates how technological change is reproducing and intensifying existing inequalities, while also opening new spatial practices and occupational forms. What does it mean to "be your own boss" when the platforms you depend on are not your own?

Cryptocurrency + Democracy

Funded by Digital Technology for Democracy, this project examines the relationship between democratic institutes and cryptocurrency technologies and industries. It tracks cryptocurrency-related policy and market developments. It is bringing together diverse stakeholders to foster meaningful dialogue. In addition, it creates accessible educational resources to help the public navigate this complex landscape. The overarching goal is to provide thoughtful analysis during a period of significant technological and political transformation.

Team

Lana Swartz

Principal Researcher
Associate Professor, Media Studies
Shannon Mid-career Fellow

Lana Swartz studies social and cultural aspects of money to understand the future of financial technology, livelihoods, financial literacy, and consumer protection in the digital economy. She is currently writing a book on scams, which will be about all of that, as well as her upbringing on a boat in Miami.

Her book, New Money: How Payment Became Social Media was released from Yale University Press in 2020. It was named #12 on a list of "greatest tech books of all time" by The Verge. Her co-edited book Paid: Tales of Dongles, Checks, and Other Money Stuff was published by MIT Press in April 2017. In 2023, she released a major research report on the warning signs and ways forward for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), conducted in collaboration with the MIT Digital Currency Initiative.

She has held fellowships with Berggruen Institute, University of Edinburgh Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research New England. She received the 2024 Research Excellence Award from the University of Virginia.

Max Brichta

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Thriving Youth in a Digital Environment (TYDE)

Max's research focuses on the ways digital finance shapes how we spend, invest, and make meaning around our economic lives.

Max is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Virginia working with the Thriving Youth in a Digital Environment (TYDE) initiative. His current research seeks to detail how financial and media literacy collide in the digital age, and how that impacts young adults' financial well-being. He's also a research fellow with the Communication Technology Research Lab (CTRL) based out of the University of Pittsburgh, where he studies the nexus of cryptocurrency and disinformation. He holds a PhD in Communication from the University of Southern California.

Harry Hudome

Research Affiliate
PhD Student, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

Harry Hudome is a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication. He is broadly interested in the nexus of digital platforms, physical spaces, and the experience economy. His research explores the impact of social platforms and the creator economy on the built environment, considering how physical spaces and live events are being redesigned to encourage and facilitate photography and content creation.

Harry's master's thesis at the University of Virginia focused on selfie studios and museums. At Annenberg, he will build on this work to explore how all sorts of public, private, and commercial spaces are being transformed to be more aesthetically appealing ("Instagrammable") and conducive to content creation. He also maintains a scholarly interest in celebrity, with several projects underway exploring representations of famous families in the "nepo baby" moment.