Rate My Professor Olivier Jutel

Dr. Olivier Jutel is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media, Film and Communication at the University of Otago, situated within the School of Social Sciences in the Division of Humanities. He earned his BA, Postgraduate Diploma, MA, and PhD from the University of Otago, with his doctoral dissertation titled Liberalism and its Populist Excess, which analyzed the affective styles of liberal media and Fox News conservatism. Before entering academia, Jutel worked as a television journalist and media professional. His first academic appointment was at the University of the South Pacific, after which he joined the University of Otago.

Jutel's research focuses on the political economy of the media, cryptocurrency, blockchain, and Web3 technologies, platform imperialism and data sovereignty, post-politics and populism, science, technology and society studies, discourse analysis, and psychoanalytic political theory. His scholarship examines the geopolitics of digital media and emerging technologies, addressing themes such as blockchain applications in the developing world as extensions of techno-colonialism, blockchain imperialism in the Pacific, crypto-colonialism in West Africa, platform imperialism in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the Network State movement. Notable publications include Blockchain imperialism in the Pacific (Big Data & Society, 2021), The horror of communication (Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 2023), Blockchain financialization, neo-colonialism, and Binance (Frontiers in Blockchain, 2023), Platform imperialism and disinformation in Aotearoa-New Zealand (Platforms & Society, 2025), The Network State, Exit, and the Political Economy of Venture Capital (Antipode, 2025), and Crypto/Space: Computational parasitism, virtual land grabs, and the production of Web3 Exit zones (2024). Jutel has appeared on podcasts including the QAA Podcast episode on The Problem of Disinformation (2025) and the 1/200 Podcast episode Doge in the manger (2025). He currently coordinates MFCO 202 Theory of Communication Studies and MFCO 315 Digital Media and Society. As a media expert, his areas of commentary include blockchain and cryptocurrencies, conspiracy theories and online extremism, American politics and populism, free speech, big data capitalism, and social media regulation.