Merlyna Lim

Biography

Merlyna Lim is a Canada Research Professor, a Full Professor of Communication and Media Studies, and Director of the ALiGN Media Lab at Carleton University. Born and raised in Dayeuhkolot, Indonesia, Lim holds PhD in Science and Technology Studies from the University of Twente, the Netherlands. Lim was the Canada Research Chair in Digital Media and Global Network Society (2014-2025).

Merlyna Lim’s research explores the co-constitutive relationship between technology and society, with a particular focus on power, spatial and temporal formations, and the materialities of digital infrastructures. Lim examines how platforms and algorithmic systems mediate governance, public discourse, and political life while interrogating the shifting boundaries of influence, visibility, and control. Among her notable publications are Social Media and Politics in Southeast Asia (Cambridge UP, 2024), Roots, Routes, Routers: Communication and Media of Contemporary Social Movements  (Sage, 2018) and Online Collective Action: Dynamics of the Crowds in Social Media  (Springer 2014).

Through an interdisciplinary and empirically grounded approach, Lim combines digital methods, ethnography, discourse analysis, and critical theory to analyze disinformation networks, algorithmic publics, and the political economy of platforms. Rooted in postcolonial and Global South perspectives, Lim’s work resists extractive knowledge production and emphasizes ethical, relational engagements—whether through post-publication listening, reflexive writing, or creative practices like storytelling and sketching. Across all of this, Lim remains attentive to the affective, embodied, and infrastructural dimensions of how digital technologies shape, and are shaped by, everyday life.

An award-winning scholar, Lim was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists in 2016. In 2020, Carleton University recognized her among the Top 10 Women Leaders and Researchers for International Women’s Day. She has held fellowships and received awards from institutions including the London School of Economics and Political Science, Humboldt University, Princeton University, the Volkswagen Foundation, the East-West Center, the Open Society Foundations, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Lim is also the recipient of the 2012 Best Publication Award in Information Systems and was named one of the “100 Most Inspiring Indonesian Women” by the Kartini Foundation in 2011.

Her interdisciplinary research has been supported by grants from the Canada Research Chairs program, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada), the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Research Fund, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, among others.

Over the course of her career, Lim has delivered more than 250 invited talks all over the globe, and appeared in more than 200 media coverages, including The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and CBC News. Previously she was a Visiting Research Professor with Princeton University’s Center of Information Technology Policy, a Distinguished Scholar of Technology and Public Engagement at Arizona State University, and a Networked Public Research Fellow at the Annenberg Center for Communication University of Southern California.

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“Algorithmic Heartbeats: Love and Hate in the Time of Social Media”

Merlyna Lim’s plenary talk, the Eastern Ontario Symposium of the Royal Society of Canada, 2024>

Selected Publications

(for a complete and most updated list see publications)

Books & Monographs

Lim, M. 2024. Social Media and Politics in Southeast Asia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [authored, peer-reviewed monograph] [ONLINE/PDF] [PRINT][VIDEO ABSTRACT]

Mouser, H., Daggett, M., Chea, R., Sawas, A., Sanderson, B., Roth, D., Deb, D., Paramita, E., Lee, J., Regattieri, L., Lim, M., Sekyiamah, N. D., Vidalon, N., Linares, N. L., Senlle, R., Novayanti, R., Raman, T., Hernandez, V., & Agbeniyi, Y. 2024. Uncommon Sense: A Systems-Based Strategic Communications Handbook for Changing the World. The Multicultural Leadership Initiative. https://www.uncommonsense.earth [handbook]

Lim, M. 2020. Hands: Medium & Massage. Ottawa, ON: Ottawa Arts Council, The City of Ottawa, and the ALiGN Media Lab. [scholar-artist book] [ONLINE]

Lim, M.  2018. Roots, Routes, Routers: Communications and Media of Contemporary Social Movements, Sage. Journalism & Communication Monographs Series [PDF] [long-form research/mini-monograph, with commentaries]

Agarwal, N., Lim, M., Wigand, R. (eds.) 2014. Online Collective Action: Dynamics of the Crowd in Social Media, New York/Heidelberg: Springer. [PDF] [peer-reviewed edited volume]

Lim, M. 2005. Radicalism and Anti Americanism in Indonesia: The Role of the Internet, Washington DC/Honolulu HI: East West Center (Policy Studies Series). [PDF]  [authored, peer-reviewed monograph]

Selected Articles and Book Chapters (most recent only)

Lim, M. 2025. In curhat we unite (and divide): Scalable affective sociability, algorithmic politics, and social media in Indonesia. Indonesia. 119 (April): 39-57. https://doi.org/10.1353/ind.2025.a961926.

Kloos, D., Lim, M., Linquist, J. 2025. Faith, Followers, and Factions: Making Social Media Publics in Indonesia. Indonesia. 119 (April): 1- 23. https://doi.org/10.1353/ind.2025.a961924.

Lim, M. 2023. “Everything everywhere all at once”: Social Media, Algorithmic/Marketing Culture, and Activism in Southeast Asia. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 24(2): 181-190. [PDF] or [PDF]. https://doi.org/10.1353/gia.2023.a913644.

Lim, M. 2023. From activist media to algorithmic politics: The Internet, Social Media & Civil Society in Southeast Asia, in E. Hansson & M. Weiss (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Civil and Uncivil Society in Southeast Asia (pp. 25-44). New York & London: Routledge. [PDF].

Lim, M. 2022. Alternative Imaginations: Confronting and Challenging the Persistent Centrism in Social Media-Society Research. Journal of Asian Social Science Research, 4(1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.15575/jassr.v4i1.59

Lim, M. 2022. #Coronaconspiracy: Algorithms, Users, and Conspiracy Theories in Social Media. M/C Journal, 25(1). https://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/2877

Lim, M. 2020. The politics and perils of dis/connection in the Global South (Crosscurrent: The Limits and Boundaries of Digital Disconnection). Media, Culture & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443720914032 [PDF]

Lim, M. 2020. Algorithmic enclaves: Affective politics and algorithms in the neoliberal social media landscape. In M. Boler & E. Davis (eds.), Affective Politics of Digital Media: Propaganda by Other Means (pp. 186-203). New York & London: Routledge. [PDF]

Teaching

• Internet, Infrastructure, Materialities
• Media & Social Activism
• Digital Media & Global Network Society
• Civic Media
• Global Media and Communication
• Transnational and Global Communication
• Communication Theory
• Communication and the Built Environment

Graduate Students

I have supervised numerous postdoctoral fellows and doctoral, master’s, and honours students to completion, across a wide range of topics, including:

• Diasporic communication
• Social media activism
• Disinformation and conspiracy
• Spatiality, temporality, and materiality of communication
• Power and agency
• Social movements
• Surveillance
• Platform capitalism
• … and more.