Latest columns

Maptivism: how Strava affords identity work

Column

Ruben den Boer

20/06/2022

6 minutes to read

Self-tracking can be used for identity work. In this essay, I explore how a self-tracking app I use - Strava - affords identity work through slacktivist discourse affordances.

Vlogging during the coronavirus crisis

Column

Mingyi Hou

14/04/2020

7 minutes to read

Chinese student Yi Dahua’s vlogging from Turin, Italy has made him a micro-celebrity during the coronavirus crisis. His case illustrates a "boundary-blurred" public sphere with widely varied public communication on the pandemic.

Covid-19: A World United, A World Apart

Column

Ana Deumert

06/04/2020

8 minutes to read

Covid-19 affects us all, but it affects us differently. In this column I look at #StayAtHome policies outside of middle-class realities, and argue for caring and compassionate policy interventions that support the most vulnerable.

The Coronavirus and online culture: Lessons we're learning

Column

Jan Blommaert

30/03/2020

7 minutes to read

The coronavirus crisis shows us an inescapable fact: the online and offline dimensions of social life have effectively become fused.

The coronavirus, the attention economy and far-right junk news

Column

Ico Maly

24/03/2020

9 minutes to read

The coronavirus has devastating consequences for social life in all corners of the world. For some, this global pandemic is an opportunity to reach a wide audience, to make money or to further a political agenda.

Hashtag activism in the online-offline continuum

Hashtag tactics: Algorithmic activism in Chile

Column

Juan Eduardo Bonnin

09/03/2020

7 minutes to read

Algorithmic activism requires handcrafted tactics to reinforce the online-offline continuum of political actions. We can see it at work in the first week of protests in Chile.

Pelosi and Trump: Choreographies of conflict

Column

Jan Blommaert

03/03/2020

10 minutes to read

Pelosi and Trump don't get along too well. A number of emblematic pictures document this conflict, and in each of them concrete body movements are sensed to tell the story.

On racism and how to read Hannah Arendt

Column

Ana Deumert

27/02/2020

8 minutes to read

In this column Ana Deumert looks at the work of Hannah Arendt. She asks how scholars can engage with her work, given the persistent presence of racist tropes in her writings.

Let’s talk about big tech (no, not you)

Column

Linnet Taylor

25/02/2020

4 minutes to read

In her first Diggit column, Linnet Taylor (Tilburg University) makes the case that big tech has a consent problem and that researchers should address the lumpy, inconvenient, political reality of big tech.

The (pseudo)science of profiling and surveillance

Column

Piia Varis

20/02/2020

9 minutes to read

Both online profiling and targeting as well as border surveillance are big business, but both also seem to rely on dubious scientific claims and foundations.

gravedigging, digital shaming, digital gravedigging, social media celebrities

Online gravedigging, identity and privacy

Column

Mingyi Hou

18/02/2020

11 minutes to read

This article analyzes gravedigging as a digital practice, and illustrates its roles in online shaming and celebrity image management activities.

The monolingual bias in studies on populism

Column

Juan Eduardo Bonnin

06/02/2020

4 minutes to read

Scholarly articles written in English about populism often forget linguistic and discursive diversity. Drawing from a monolingual tradition, they tend to overlook linguistic and discursive diversity in the political processes they study.

Conservative critiques of identity politics as divisive

Column

Rosalyn Negrón

21/01/2020

11 minutes to read

Rosalyn Negron unpacks the logics that underlie conservative critiques of left identity politics and zooms in on the specific significance of this discursive frame among conservatives.