Category: Editorial

We Need To Talk

Kevin Munger

With this essay, Assistant Professor Kevin Munger sharpens our understanding of what we mean by “new orality.” How do we research—or even think about—an era that no longer operates by the logic of the text? What we must unlearn to see it clearly, and where we stand once our old maps stop working.… Read More

Kevin Munger is Assistant Professor and holds the Chair of Computational Social Science in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute, in Florence. He studies the communication of political information on the internet, and how to make digital social science make sense. He is the author of two books: Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture (2022) and The YouTube Apparatus (2024). In 2021, he co-founded the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, of which he is currently co-editor. And Kevin regularly publishes his thoughts on his Substack Never Met a Science.

Iran: Visibility, Blackouts, and the Platformed Battlefield

Alina Lupu

Fragments of war—missile strikes, phone recordings, air-defense footage, reposted clips—appear momentarily between memes, lifestyle videos, and other entertainment content. In this essay, Alina Lupu focuses on the experience of seeing the war in Iran through the logic of the personalised feed. … Read More

Alina Lupu is a Romanian-born, Amsterdam-based post-conceptual artist, writer, photographer, and activist that is overly online, in an attempt to investigate how images shape social movements and how art can contribute to imagining alternatives to exploitative political and economic systems.

Bring Back Internet Secrets!

Macarena Magaña Villar

Macarena Magaña Villar finds herself in a cinema watching TikToks with strangers and realises the internet can still be a portal, not just a private hole to fall down.… Read More

Macarena Magaña Villar is a researcher, artist, writer, mostly a cultural worker and social media manager. Most of her work originates from the long hours she spent in front of the family computer growing up and her experience managing social media accounts, which made her particularly drawn to the internet subcultures, digital and non-digital folklore, self-conceptualization, and collective grieving that can emerge online. Her practice is fluid and in-situ, replying to each specific topic.

Audio Report: Data Centre Tour

Listen back to our experiences visiting the data centres in the Wieringermeerpolder… Read More

Space, people, and the digital extensions of protest

Ola Hassanain

An essay by Ola Hassanain. Ola zooms into the urbanscape of Khartoum under the recent revolution in Sudan and speculates on the role of social media platforms in the collective reimagining of space.… Read More

About Ola: Ola Hassanain’s videos, texts, performances and installation-based photographic work produces intriguing layered artwork that is informed by the cultural, political, and societal position of people in Khartoum, including her own experiences and her family’s diaspora. When her family scattered across the globe due to economic collapse in Sudan, her fascination with the ways the built environment reflects, responds to, and shapes the lives of those who inhabit it increased. Her most recent work explores the idea of “space as discourse,” an expanded notion of space that encompasses political and environmental questions. Hassanain’s honors include the University of Westminster’s Quintin Hogg Trust scholarship, a BAK–basis voor actuele kunst fellowship, and a Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development grant. Hassanaian lives and works in Khartoum and Utrecht, and is currently a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.

These are the images you have to see in October 2019

Selected by Marie Lotte Hagen and Nydia van Voorthuizen from Damn, Honey.… Read More

TikTok: Copycat Culture as the New Cool

Linda Duits

An essay by Linda Duits. Linda dives into the world of TikTok. She emerged with insights on the shifting definition of cool, copycat culture, and the transfer of global power.… Read More

About Linda: Linda Duits is a social scientist specialized in popular culture. She writes columns for Folia and Brainwash, and regularly appears in the media as an expert on youth culture. She is an affiliated researcher with the Institute for Cultural Inquiry of Utrecht University.

A User’s Guide to Not Getting Used

Anna Reutinger

An essay by Anna Reutinger. Anna offers tips and tricks to bypass the digital detox, subvert functionality, mess with your data, and shift power back to the user.… Read More

About Anna: Anna Reutinger is a sculptor originally from California, living and working in Berlin. Reutinger’s work subverts the position of the digital-native-global-citizen by soothing digitally induced anxieties and providing coping mechanisms to apocalyptic inevitabilities through a return to craft and empathy. She received her M.F.A. in Dirty Art from the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam, and her B.A. in Design Media Arts and Digital Humanities from UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). Her work has been exhibited at the Saint Etienne Biennale, FR; Jan van Eyck Academie, W139, Ram Foundation, De Fabriek, NL; Macao, Milan, IT; The Hammer Museum, The Getty Center, The New Wight Gallery, Chin’s Push and Control Room, Los Angeles, US. 

Before you were here

Menso Heus

An essay by Menso Heus. Menso scoured the archives of wwwtext. org and textfiles.com to show that many of today’s most divisive topics were already being actively debated decades before.… Read More

About Menso: Menso left school for a career as a technologist. After working with, among others, XS4ALL and Free Press Unlimited, he is currently head of technology at Keezel, a privacy focussed organisation that builds the Keezel VPN router. Menso has been writing about hacking, security, human rights and mass surveillance since 1998, for publications such as Net Magazine, Parool and the Volkskrant. Find Menso on Twitter.

The Simulated Real: Roleplaying Terrorism in Gaming

Salvador Miranda

An essay by Salvador Miranda. Salvador explores the experience of roleplaying terrorism in gaming. Where does this desire come from and what does it say about how we construct our own identities? … Read More

Double tapping on the white walls of the museum

Manique Hendricks

An essay by Manique Hendricks. Manique shares her views on the ways in which museums and their visitors make use of Instagram and the impact this growing social media platform has on the art world.… Read More

About Manique: Manique Hendricks (1992) is an art historian. She works at LIMA, the institute for media art in Amsterdam and is affiliated with Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen and art platform 37PK. Manique is part of the team of curators at We Are Public and organizes exhibitions and events with Sugar Pop Institute. As a freelancer she conducts research, writes, curates and coordinates projects. Her work focuses on contemporary (media) art, visual- and digital culture and theme’s as identity, representation, camp and club culture

Is Article 13 really the end of the open internet?

Joe McNamee

An essay by Joe McNamee. Joe elaborates on the potential impact of the copyright law Article 13 on artists and content providers.… Read More

About Joe: Joe McNamee, former Executive Director of European Digital Rights (EDRi), claimed a space in Brussels and the heart of the European Union for digital fundamental rights to be heard. EDRi has fought excessive copyright regulations in the EU—most recently against Articles 13 and 11. EDRi has also worked for Europe’s net neutrality rules, against privatised law enforcement, and was instrumental in the bruising lobbying battle over the GDPR, the “General Data Protection Regulation” that increased digital privacy for people in Europe and beyond. McNamee joined EDRi in 2009, at a time when there were no digital rights advocacy groups based in Brussels, despite the importance of EU decision-making for global digital freedom. During the nine years since, EDRi has grown to become an established part of digital rights policy-making. Prior to joining EDRi, McNamee worked for eleven years on Internet policy, including for the European Internet Services Providers Association. He started his Internet career working on the CompuServe UK helpdesk in 1995.

April/May 2017: #gardenspicer, the banal, Humble & how nothing beats a good cat picture.

WINNER This image organically reached the Facebook timeline of more than a million people within 24 hours, making it the most successful post ever on my page Grappig Plaatje. JustRead More

March 2017: A global imaginary, Pepsi, fun with flags and a social criticism starter pack

A GLOBAL IMAGINARY Is there such a thing as a global culture with a distinct “imaginary”? If there is, it must be sought in the commercial products many global citizensRead More