Dit is de omgekeerde wereld. De academische vrijheid wordt bedreigd doordat onze onderzoekers die zich uitspreken in het publieke debat over “omstreden” onderwerpen als snel het doelwit worden van online bedreigingen, met name uit extreemrechtse hoek.

🚨The Critical AI Seminar Series returns in 2025/2026 ✨ This year we will have four talks and are beyond excited to welcome @amoorelouise.bsky.social & @alexcampolo.bsky.social, Fabian Offert, Helene Ratner & @nannathylstrup.bsky.social and @thaophan.bsky.social ✨ Sign up: bit.ly/uvacriticala...

Together with Marc Tuters and @robtoes.bsky.social I wrote an essay on the Charlie Kirk assassination, the Groypers - Nick Fuentes connection and the state of memetic political violence today oilab.eu/frozen-antag...

The last few weeks I worked 4CAT's LLM features. We're not free from Silicon Valley APIs yet, but you have more options in terms of providers (including Mistral) and it's also possible to use local LLMs through LM Studio and Ollama. Check it out:

🔎New paper! Guillén Torres and I study "enrichment" on Google and Bing as a form of content moderation. Main finding: enrichment can be erratic, with components like "AI Overviews" even being banned for certain political queries like those including "trump". Pre-print: ssrn.com/abstract=528...

Op nos.nl ging de laatste vijftien jaar even vaak over klimaatverandering als over Erik ten Hag. (2853 vs. 2766 artikelen/updates) @xrnl.bsky.social @nieuws.nos.nl

Tired of looking at Excel rows when investigating social media data? 4CAT's new Explorer feature is here to help!

yes een nieuwe kans voor Schier

Na ons artikel uit 2021 over klimaatverslaggeving (www.groene.nl/artikel/we-h...) was het tijd voor een data-update. Gelukkig is meer aandacht voor de klimaatcrisis in de vier grootste kranten. Maar er is nog steeds een golfbeweging gaande en aandacht is de laatste maanden weer afgenomen.

We’re hiring: Lecturer in Cultural Data & AI and Archival & Information Studies (Media Studies, @uvahumanities.bsky.social)! Join @tpoell.bsky.social, @riederb.bsky.social, myself, & other wonderful colleagues in the Critical Data & AI team. Applications due 28 May. werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

🗞️ A great deep dive in Dutch newspaper @nrc.nl, in which Elon Musk's tweets over the past few months are analysed after capturing them with our tool Zeeschuimer (tools.digitalmethods.net/zeeschuimer/)! www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/...

De afgelopen maanden werkte ik als AI-trainer om chatbots als ChatGPT nuttiger, vriendelijker en 'menselijker' te maken. Alles over mijn avonturen in deze 'droombaan' lees je in de @groene.nl van deze week. Met heerlijke illustraties van @kamagurka.bsky.social. www.groene.nl/artikel/heea...

Waarom gaan extreem-rechts en memecultuur zo goed samen? In deze nieuwe aflevering verwonderen ons met @hetsalwel.bsky.social over 4chan ondermediadoctoren.nl/afl-202-4chan/

New search engine scraper tool by @best.wel.moe and @digitalmethods.net! I added the feature to collect widgets from Google and Bing (it was a lot of work, please use it 😂). Feedback welcome.

we are hiring a PhD candidate for the project "Interface of Intelligence: How Generative AI Reshapes Knowledge, Media, and Interpretation"; details here: werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

Lots of new stuff!

Throwback to my proudest citation, from "Exhaustive Survey of Rickrolling in Academic Literature" arxiv.org/pdf/2204.06826

🔍 How can creative coding techniques like soundscaping and video recomposition help us unpack political issues + influencer practices on TikTok? 🎵📹 📖 Insights from explorations w/ @publicdatalab.bsky.social around the 2024 Romanian elections at @digitalmethods.net winter school:

they're finally adding the 25th hour

Door @coenvdven.bsky.social, @rasitelibol.bsky.social en @hetsalwel.bsky.social in @groene.nl

damn

Pretty ironic how TikTok bending the knee to Trump is the result of the US gov's supposed attempt at curbing government interference through social media.

His last number of the day was #1 youtu.be/NfDniBBowyU

'subreddit tapestries' #mildlyinterestinggraphs

www.cnn.com/2025/01/07/t... this is so so incredibly cynical, but it’s the (historical) reality that large corporations will always surf whatever political wave is dominant to protect their financial interests…even fascism

"Chatbots and LLMs for Internet Research?" - opening of @digitalmethods.net #dmi25 at University of Amsterdam ✨🧵https://www.digitalmethods.net/

Have to finish setting this up later but for now: new publication! Using the Birmingham School's subcultural theory to look at political compass memes, we attempt to theorize how "digital political subcultures" are refashioning political subjectivity www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

ik maakte hier al wrapped grollen voordat het cool was, om het maar even gezegd te hebben

good album: open.spotify.com/album/4mZgIo...

To all the researchers here on @bsky.app for whom the topic data access from online platforms is relevant, please consider writing a short feedback on the draft of the delegated acts for the DSA: ec.europa.eu/info/law/bet...

Follow @digitalmethods.net for your healthy dose of tool updates 🦋

🍂 Release v1.46: Autumn Additions 🍂 - Add custom data sources and processors as 'extensions' (see t.ly/WQc4Z) - Import Threads data from Zeeschuimer - Import and export datasets as zip files - Crawl Telegram based on mentions and links - LLM processor for text classification And more: t.ly/psaqe

Join our cool new reading group on digital media and rhythm: asca.uva.nl/programme/re...

Hellooo world! We'll use this profile for informal updates and questions regarding the 4CAT: Capture and Analysis Toolkit. If you want to check out what's new with 4CAT outside of BlueSky, check out the GitHub releases github.com/digitalmetho... Stay tuned for exciting new features 🐈🐈🐈🐈

My dissertation is now publicly available here: hdl.handle.net/11245.1/387b... It features reworks of six articles as well as four new chapters.

If you're in Amsterdam, on 24 June, @profafinlayson.bsky.social will explain what “reactionary digital politics” is, how it is shaped by “ideological entrepreneurs,” and how this is reconfiguring our understanding of what it is to be political. Sign up here: spui25.nl/programma/di...

Weer stuurt het CvB van de UvA de ME af op onze studenten. Shame shame shame www.folia.nl/nl/liveblog/...

come exchange thoughts with us!

fun times en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project...

Vandaag in het acht uur journaal: huilende mannen

Final paper of my PhD out! What a relief 😅

How do fears regarding a loss of agency persist in our networked condition? @ddzeeuw.bsky.social and Jernej Merkelj write about "agency panic" to reflect on the growing idea that online, everyone is controlled. They do so by analysing the NPC meme and the trope of the Internet addict. Read it here👇

"Twitter (now X)" or "X (formerly Twitter)"??

Jullie top songs staan op Spotify? Cute

"[Waarom geen] uitleg van een deskundige over dit gedachtegoed? Ze brengt het rechts-extremisme niet alleen ongefilterd maar ook met nauwelijks context en duiding." Doorgeefluikjournalistiek dus. www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2023/...

Nog steeds aan het bijkomen van de race tussen Schier en Vlieland

💡 Emillie de Keulenaar wrote about "speech affordances" for Big Data & Society. Using the Kekistan meme as a case study, she explores how site affordances and moderation shapes speech across platforms. 👉 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I guess we'll promote our stuff here and on Mastodon from now on ✌️