Ego Media: Life Writing and Online Affordances

Saunders, Max, and Lisa Gee, eds.

Alisa Miller

I grew up in Michigan in the United States and moved to the United Kingdom in 2002. I received my BA in History with a minor in English Literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2002). I also hold an MA in the History of International Relations from the London School of Economics (2004), and a DPhil from the University of Oxford (2008) for a thesis on poetry, politics, and propaganda in Britain during the First World War, which appeared in monograph form as Rupert Brooke in the First World War (2018). I subsequently worked as a lecturer and in research policy and management. I joined King’s College London to work on the European Research Council–funded Ego Media and Beyond Enemy Lines projects in October 2016. In 2021 I was appointed Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. My research focuses on the comparative development of war cultures in twentieth-century Europe and the United States, on the interactions between institutions (people, governments and military) that enable wars, and particularly at how media networks – utilizing evolving technologies – influence political discourses and perceptions of violence.

Alisa Miller discusses her project on war writing

Video 1. Ego Media / Lisa Gee

My name is Dr. Alisa Miller, and I am interested in communication systems.

Although I’ve been quite traditional in how I’ve worked in archives, life writing, looking at particular poets, and particular conditions, a thread through all of that has been, well, how is their work sort of disseminated to the public? How is the public in conversation with that work?

And although one may think, okay, what’s happening, for instance, during the context of the First World War doesn’t have much to do with what's happening now, you can see similarities, you can, you can sort of trace a line.

My Ego Media project is specifically looking at war writing on- and offline. How various individuals used the media, how they used or – well, I suppose – worked with the media or worked within, sort of, mediated contexts to disseminate their work.

Also questions of institutions: newspapers and war journalists, how they’re using online forums to reach new audiences in some cases, but also to tell stories in different ways.

I wanted to test some ideas about communication systems, about, sort of, network theory, about how, for instance, new war writers are discovered. Who’s influencing what they’re writing?

It’s very interesting to test the sort of context and to see where sort of influence can be traced out.

Alisa on researching social media

Video 2. Ego Media / Lisa Gee

There’s something about social media being so sort of – or pushing you to be a little bit fragmentary – and kind of playing with your attention span. And you can always go off and in some new direction, and you can always keep yourself interested, but you are not necessarily focused.

It can be very difficult to sort of orientate yourself. Everyone is dealing with the sort of information overload. And you have to make choices about which material you discuss at length. There may be other pockets that you’re just not even aware of because you are, yourself, down these kind of, in these kind of filter bubbles.

At the point that we’re still at, with respect to social media, it’s sometimes difficult to feel that you can put your own kind of filters on things, and to think strategically as you should about what you’re reading.

Alisa on the challenge of ensuring the right voices are heard

Video 3. Ego Media / Lisa Gee

The most challenging aspects of the research for Ego Media – on the research side, I think it is just that it is a relatively new medium for me.

In the past only a very narrow kind of strata of experience has made it into the record. And that has kind of formed broader public sort of memories and consensus about particular conflicts. And you’re always conscious that you don’t want to repeat those mistakes. And yet, you’re always aware that certain voices are not making it to you.

It’s very easy just to sort of grab for what is proximate, what is close to you, and what is easy.