I am a senior lecturer in the Department of Communication and Journalism. Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC-funded DigitalValues project directed by Prof. Limor Shifman. I received my PhD from the Department of Political and International Studies at the University of Lodz, Poland, where I conducted my doctoral research in the context of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie project GRACE – Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe. My research investigates how images circulated on social media convey values shaped by users’ identities, vernacular norms of evaluation, and platform’s neoliberal logics. My work addresses images exchanged in mundane social interactions as well as the strategic use of images in political campaigns. The questions driving my research agenda include: (1) How do the neoliberal values promoted by platforms manifest in popular genres of social media images? (2) What are the values that users see as expressed in popular visual genres and what norms do they invoke when evaluating them? and (3) How do politicians use images to navigate the tension between their political values and the market-oriented values of the platforms they use to promote them? My analysis of platform neoliberalism investigates how the market-oriented values of social media companies infuse the culture of their platforms, “funneling” users’ expression towards modes of showing oneself that can easily be monetized. My analysis of vernacular evaluation highlights how users from different areas of the world consistently associate popular visual genres with specific values and evaluate them based on shared notions of good communication. Finally, my analysis explicitly political image genres focuses on how charismatic leaders borrow from the repertoire of social media influencers to simultaneously appear ordinary and extraordinary, aspirational and relatable.
Research interests
Social media
Neoliberalism
Evaluation
Populism
Gender
Selected publications
Trillò, T., Hallinan, B., Mizoroki, S., Scharlach, R., Park, P. H., Green, A., Weiss Yaniv, N., & Shifman, L. (2025). Liking without borders? Authenticity and the evaluation of Instagram photo genres. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 30(4). https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmaf008
Shifman, L., Trillò, T., Hallinan, B., Mizoroki, S., Green, A., Scharlach, R., & Frosh, P. (2025). The expression of values on social media: An analytical framework. New Media & Society. Online First. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241307035
Trillò, T., & Starita, G. D. (2025). The Middle Region Populism of Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Renzi on Instagram. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 30(1), 122–144. https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612231186938
Trillò, T. (2024). “PoV: You are reading an academic article.” The memetic performance of affiliation in TikTok’s platform vernacular. New Media & Society, Online First. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448241290234
Trillò, T., & Green, A. (2024). #Values for money? The neoliberal construction of “values” across Instagram language communities. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 27(6), 831–851. https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779241257531
Trillò, T., Hallinan, B., Green, A., Kim, B., Mizoroki, S., Scharlach, R., Park, P. H., Frosh, P., & Shifman, L. (2023). “I love this photo, I can feel their hearts!” How users across the world evaluate social media portraiture. Journal of Communication, 73(3), 235–246. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqad009
Trillò, T. (2023). “It’s Like the Fridge Magnet of the Internet”: Platform Aesthetics, Generational Taste, and the Cross-Cultural Valuation of Good Morning Memes. Social Media + Society, 9(2), 20563051231177951. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231177951
Starita, G. D., & Trillò, T. (2022). ‘Happy Monday friends! Coffee?’ Matteo Salvini, good morning selfies, and the influencer politician. Contemporary Italian Politics, 14(3), 331–351. https://doi.org/10.1080/23248823.2021.2005339
Trillò, T., Hallinan, B., & Shifman, L. (2022). A typology of social media rituals. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 27(4). https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmac011
Trillò, T., Scharlach, R., Hallinan, B., Kim, B., Mizoroki, S., Frosh, P., & Shifman, L. (2021). What Does #Freedom Look Like? Instagram and the Visual Imagination of Values. Journal of Communication, 71(6), 875–897. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqab021
Awards
Top Faculty Paper Award – Visual Communication Division, 71st Annual International Communication Association Conference. (2021)
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions – Fully funded PhD. (2016-2019)