Dr. Jaroslav Švelch is a researcher and lecturer at the Charles University’s Faculty of Social Sciences. He has a bachelor degree in Journalism and a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Media Studies from Charles University Faculty of Social Sciences, and a Master’s degree in the Linguistics and Phonetics/Translation and Interpretation: English double major from the Charles University Faculty of Arts. In 2007–2008, he was a visiting researcher at MIT’s Comparative Media Studies department; in 2012, he was a Ph.D. intern at Microsoft Research New England. His research interests include social use of digital media, history of computer games, and language management in online environments. In the PolCoRe working group, he focuses mainly on qualitative analyses of political participation through humor and remixing.
Recent publications:
Švelch, J. (2015). Excuse my poor English: language management in English-language online discussion forums. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2015(232). http://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2014-0046
Švelch, J., & Vochocová, L. (2015). Social Media As a New Challenge for Political Participation Research. Czech Sociological Review, 51(1), 65. http://doi.org/10.13060/00380288.2015.51.1.154
Sherman, T., & Švelch, J. (2014). “Grammar Nazis never sleep”: Facebook humor and the management of standard written language. Language Policy, 1–20. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-014-9344-9
Švelch, J. (2014). Comedy of Contingency: Making Physical Humor in Video Game Spaces. International Journal of Communication, 8(0), 2530–2552.
Švelch, J. (2013). Say it with a Computer Game: Hobby Computer Culture and the Non-entertainment Uses of Homebrew Games in the 1980s Czechoslovakia. Game Studies, 13(2).
Švelch, J. (2013). The delicate art of criticizing a saviour: “Silent gratitude” and the limits of participation in the evaluation of fan translation. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 19(3), 303–310. doi:10.1177/1354856513486531
Švelch, J. (2013). Indiana Jones fights the communist police: Local appropriation of the text adventure genre in the 1980s Czechoslovakia. In N. B. Huntemann & B. Aslinger (Eds.), Gaming Globally: Production, Play, and Place (pp. 163–182). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Švelch, J. (2013). Monsters by the numbers: Controlling monstrosity in video games. In M. Levina & D.-M. T. Bui (Eds.), Monster culture in the 21st century: A reader (pp. 193–208). New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Švelch, J. (2010). The Good, the Bad, and the Player: The Challenges to Moral Engagement in Single-Player Avatar-Based Video Games. In Schrier, Karen & Gibson, David (Eds.), Ethics and Game Design: Teaching values through play (pp. 52–68). Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.