Jasmine Banks Mel Monier and Olivia Stowell / University of Michigan

Jasmine Banks is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on exploring the psychology of online behaviors and experiences at the intersection of race, identity, and culture.



Mel Monier is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Michigan. They use queer and intersectional feminist theory in their research, which focuses on digital media and the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and embodiment.



Olivia Stowell is a Ph.D. student in Communication and Media at the University of Michigan, where she studies identity and power in television and digital media, particularly focusing on race and ethnicity. Her research has appeared in Television and New Media and New Review of Film and Television Studies, and her public writing has appeared in Post45 Contemporaries, Avidly: A Channel of the L.A. Review of Books, ASAP/J, and elsewhere.

Time to Be Real?: Nostalgia, Authenticity, and the Digital Return to the Everyday
Jasmine Banks, Mel Monier, and Olivia Stowell / University of Michigan

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Jasmine Banks, Mel Monier, and Olivia Stowell examine the desires for authenticity and nostalgia at the core of BeReal’s affordances. These authors argue that the staying power of this app is yet to be seen, the structures of feelings evoked and constructed through the app’s design points towards enduring subject-making processes of the digital.

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