Lana Swartz

books

• Lana Swartz. New Money: How Payment Became Social Media. Yale University Press, 2020.

• Bill Maurer and Lana Swartz, eds. Paid: Tales of Dongles, Checks, and Other Money Stuff. MIT Press, 2017.

in progress & in press

• Lana Swartz, Harry Hudome, and Maximilian Brichta. “‘I’m a small business owner therefore I’m also a content creator’: New forms of labor and the platformization of the small business.”

• Lana Swartz. “Dirty Money.” In Focus: Dirty Media. Journal of Cinema and Media Studies.

• Lana Swartz. “Social Media’s Scam Era.” Social Media + Society (10th anniversary issue).

2026

• Lana Swartz, Harry Hudome, Maximilian Brichta, and Kate Larson. Financial Lives in a Networked Generation. FLiNG.

2025

• Lana Swartz and Alice Marwick. “Meta must rein in scammers or face consequences.” The Verge.

• Lana Swartz, Alice Marwick, and Kate Larson. ScamGPT: AI and the Automation of Fraud. Data & Society.

• Lana Swartz. “Social Media and the Changing Infrastructures of Money.” In The Cambridge Global Companion to Financial Infrastructure. Cambridge University Press.

• Ann Brody, Jenn Mentanko, Peter Chow-White, and Lana Swartz. “Web3 and Communication.” Oxford Bibliographies.

2024

• Lana Swartz. Understanding the Twenty-First Century Small Business. Filene Institute.

2023

• Lana Swartz. “‘If it’s a ponzi, get in early’: The Ideology of Scam Futures.” Crooked Timber.

• Lana Swartz and Vivian Dzokoto. “COVID Relief as ‘Dangerous Money’ for Black Business Owners.” Journal of Cultural Economy 16 (3).

• Lana Swartz and Carola Westermeier. “The money tree: Exploring central bank digital currency blockchain imaginaries.” Anthropology Today 39: 13–16.

• Neha Narula and Lana Swartz. “Central Bank Digital Currency? How money could be redesigned.” World Economic Forum.

• Neha Narula, Lana Swartz, and Julie Frizzo-Barker. CBDC: Expanding Financial Inclusion or Deepening the Divide. MIT Digital Currency Initiative.

2022

• Lana Swartz. “Theorizing the 2017 Blockchain ICO Bubble as a Collective Scam.” New Media and Society 24 (7).

• Lana Swartz and Parker Bach. “Making Money Public: The Journalistic Construction of the Paycheck Protection Program.” International Journal of Communication 16: 3780–3800.

• Lana Swartz. “In Praise of the Dollar Bill.” MIT Technology Review.

• Lana Swartz. “Bitcoin als Meme und als Zukunft.” Kurswechsel. Central Bank of Austria.

2021

• Lana Swartz. “Bitcoin as Meme and a Future.” Noema.

2020

• Lana Swartz. “Starbucks, Libra, and the Boring Future of Money.” Just Money, Harvard Law School.

• Lana Swartz et al. “The Power of Revealing Invisible Economic Infrastructures.” In Radical Care: Embracing Feminist Finance.

2019

• Nancy Baym, Lana Swartz, and Andrea Alarcon. “Convening technologies: Blockchain and the Music Industry.” International Journal of Communication 13: 402–421.

• Lana Swartz and David Stearns. “Money and its Technologies in the Modern Era.” In History of Money: The Modern Era. Bloomsbury Press.

2018

• Lana Swartz. “What was Bitcoin, what will it be?” Cultural Studies 32 (4): 623–650.

2017

• Taylor Nelms, Bill Maurer, Lana Swartz, and Scott Mainwaring. “Social Payments: Innovation, Trust, Bitcoin, and the Sharing Economy.” Theory, Culture and Society 35 (3): 13–33.

• Lana Swartz. “Blockchain Dreams.” In Another Economy is Possible. Polity Press.

• Lana Swartz. “Cards.” In Paid: Tales of Dongles, Checks, and Other Money Stuff. MIT Press.

• Lana Swartz. “The Lonely Old Bitcoin Miner Touches Eternity: Or, What is a Peer?” King’s Review.

• Bill Maurer and Lana Swartz. “On Cash and Stuff.” Socializing Finance.

2015

• Bill Maurer and Lana Swartz. “The Wild, Wild West of Payment.” In The MoneyLab Reader. Institute of Network Cultures.

2014

• Bill Maurer and Lana Swartz. “The Future of Money-like Things.” The Atlantic.

• Lana Swartz and Kevin Driscoll. “‘I hate your politics but I love your diamonds’.” In DIY Citizenship. MIT Press.

2013

• Bill Maurer, Taylor Nelms, and Lana Swartz. “‘When perhaps the real problem is money itself!’” Social Semiotics 23 (2): 261–277.

• Lana Swartz. “Goodbye, Wallet!” Media Fields Journal 6.

• Lana Swartz. “Gendered Transactions: Identity and Payment at Midcentury.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 42 (1&2): 137–153.

• Kjerstin Thorson et al. “YouTube, Twitter, and the Occupy Movement.” Information, Communication and Society 16 (3): 421–451.

2012

• Lana Swartz. “A Dispatch from the Future (of Money and Technology).” Cultural Anthropology.

• Lana Swartz. “Visual Culture Primer of the Occupation”; “Invisible Children”; “Ghoulish ATMs”; “Blogging and Boycotting.” Civic Paths.

2010 & 2009

• Howard Gardner and Henry Jenkins, with Lana Swartz et al. Our Space: Being a Responsible Citizen of the Digital World. MacArthur Foundation.

• Lana Swartz and Nick Seaver. Mapping in a Participatory Culture: Teachers’ Strategy Guide. Project New Media Literacies, MIT.