Michiel de Lange

Join us next week on Wed 8 October 20:00-20:45 CEST for the Master's Open Day @uumediaculture.bsky.social if you are interesting in our international Master program about #digitalmedia #digitalculture #digitalfutures www.uu.nl/en/masters/n...

Register here: www.uu.nl/en/masters/g...

Dutch Tax Administration and Customs completely switch to Microsoft Cloud. Motivation letter full of 'efficiency' and 'productivity' rhetoric but not a word about national or EU data/platform sovereignty.

URP Call for Papers "Data Centre Urbanism" Call for papers!

Interesting Call: Special Issue on "Data Centre Urbanism" eura.org/news-urp-25c... Deadline for Abstract submission: November, 30 2025 #CfP #datacenters

Underground data fortresses: the nuclear bunkers, mines and mountains being transformed to protect our ‘new gold’ from attack Bunkers, bomb shelters, mines and mountains all play critical roles protecting against our latest existential threat: the terrifying prospect of data loss.

Interesting ethnographic exploration of the materiality and situatedness of the Internet, rugged data bunkers for ethereal ‘cloud’ storage, data loss as cultural fear, and eternal data selves, by @aretaylor.bsky.social

theconversation.com/underground-...

“Your friendly AI assistant”: the anthropomorphic self-representations of ChatGPT and its implications for imagining AI - AI & SOCIETY This study analyzes how ChatGPT portrays and describes itself, revealing misleading myths about AI technologies, specifically conversational agents based on large language models. This analysis allows for critical reflection on the potential harm these misconceptions may pose for public understanding of AI and related technologies. While previous research has explored AI discourses and representations more generally, few studies focus specifically on AI chatbots. To narrow this research gap, an experimental-qualitative investigation into auto-generated AI representations based on prompting was conducted. Over the course of a month, ChatGPT (both in its GPT-4 and GPT-4o models) was prompted to “Draw an image of yourself,” “Represent yourself visually,” and “Envision yourself visually.” The resulting data (n = 50 images and 58 texts) was subjected to a critical exploratory visual semiotic analysis to identify recurring themes and tendencies in how ChatGPT is represented and characterized. Three themes emerged from the analysis: anthropomorphism, futuristic/futurism and (social)intelligence. Importantly, compared to broader AI imaginations, the findings emphasize ChatGPT as a friendly AI assistant. These results raise critical questions about trust in these systems, not only in terms of their capability to produce reliable information and handle personal data, but also in terms of human–computer relations.

My colleagues Karin van Es & Dennis Nguyen have written an accessible and critical paper about visual GenAI imaginaries:
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

With a chapter i co-authored with @ernaruijer.bsky.social and Krisztina Varro “Governing the Digital Society: Platforms, Artificial Intelligence, and Public Values”

Book launch Governing the Digital Society: Platforms, Artificial Intelligence, and Public Values GDS organizes a festive book launch of the edited volume Governing the Digital Society: Platforms, Artificial Intelligence, and Public Values.

The book is out! “Governing the Digital Society: Platforms, Artificial Intelligence, and Public Values”
@utrechtuniversity.bsky.social #governingthesigitalsociety

www.uu.nl/en/events/bo...

At the #AIindeStad conference in Breda.
(Re)thinking the relation between Ai and urban life. Main question for me today: how can #urbanAI be made more civic?
indestad.ai

sharing our new article on the role of regulation for #AI therapist chatbots.

with @jasonetucker.bsky.social and @petterericson.bsky.social

AI Policy Lab @Umeå University
#ResponsibleAI #AIgovernance

Interesting that 50% of respondents are "more concerned than exited", and only 10% univocally "more exited than concerned". Based on how "AI" is featured in many media you'd think it would be the inverse.

Turkey tails ?

In Gaza vechten gewonde of ernstig zieke kinderen voor hun leven. Zij wachten soms weken zonder geholpen te worden. Wij kunnen dat in Nederland wél.

Wij hebben de morele plicht om kinderen te helpen die nú zorg nodig hebben.

Teken de petitie: groenlinkspvda.nl/petitie/ziek...

Call for Abstracts: 2026 CDCS Symposium

Call for Abstracts: 2026 CDCS Symposium

“Good Vibes Only? How Affects and Emotions Are Mediated for Justice in Digital Culture”

www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/...

We have a book chapter forthcoming in Dec 2025 - "External Intelligence: Oracles, Divination and Animism, and the Use of #LLMs /Generative #AI; Michael D. Fischer, Sally A. Applin, and Sridhar Ravula" in Symbolic Interaction and AI bookstore.emerald.com/symbolic-int... #GenAI

San Francisco’s nicest park is a homeless-free surveillance state in the sky One critic says Salesforce Park was designed “from the get-go” to exclude homeless people. Parkgoers don’t seem to mind.

Elysium wasn’t supposed to be a blueprint.

But what iseducation? Embodied and enactive cognitive sciences remind us that knowledge is not something discrete that an individual possesses and passes down but an inherently dynamic and evolving endeavour that develops in the process of embodied, curious and engaged interaction through dialogue. The pinnacle of cognition, particularly ‘human knowing’, is inextricably interwoven with interactions we engage in

with each other and the physical, cultural and social world we inhabit, ‘so much so that individuals are not thinkable outside of their interactions and embeddedness in their (social) world’ (De Jaegher, 2019). Dialogic models of knowledge and education emphasize that interactions between a student and teacher and/or peer provide ‘scaffolding’ for how that child understands the world. The always in flux, active and continually transforming nature of human cognition necessitates that education be fundamentally an ongoing activity. Far from the reductionist view whereby ‘formal knowledge’ can be packaged and acquired from an LLM, the classroom is an environment where love, trust, empathy, care and humility are fostered and mutually cultivated through dialogical interactions

In this short piece, I lean on embodied cog sci to argue that we should refuse & resist llms in education (pp. 53-58) unesdoc.unesco.org/in/documentV...

"the classroom is an environment where love, trust, empathy, care & humility are fostered & mutually cultivated through dialogical interactions"

One more time... If you are a parent of a young child and you have allowed them to interact with some kind of generative AI tool, I would love to chat with you!

New Media & Digital Culture Delve into the many aspects of what it means to live in an age of new media. You will get in-depth knowledge about new media and digital culture with more practical hands-on experience by completing a...

From AI generated art & news, to digital cities, to green games: digital media are transforming everyday life, society, politics, and culture. The one-year MA program New Media & Digital Culture trains you to become a critical thinker and doer who understands these changes www.uu.nl/en/masters/n...

Master's Open Day 8 October 2025 (online) The Master's Open Day at Utrecht University.

Interested in #newmedia and #digitalculture?

Join the online Master Open Day on Oct. 8 2025 @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social www.uu.nl/en/events/ma... [registration open soon!]

Our session is at 20:00-20:45 CEST.

Special Issue “Celebrating 60 Years of ELIZA? Critical Pasts and Futures of AI” The Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society calls for papers for a special issue marking the 60th anniversary of ELIZA, one of the first chatbots developed by Joseph Weizenbaum.

#CfP: Special Issue “Celebrating 60 Years of ELIZA? Critical Pasts and Futures of AI” of the Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society (WJDS), co-edited by @strippel.bsky.social & Magnus Rust. Submission deadline: November 17, 2025.

More: www.weizenbaum-institut.de/news/detail/...

Happy to share that per 1 Sept 2025 I’m an Associate Professor in the Dep. of Media & Culture Studies @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social

I look forward to continue working on the many intersections between digital media technologies and urban culture.

PhD Research Fellowship on Literature and Generative AI (283024) | University of Bergen Job title: PhD Research Fellowship on Literature and Generative AI (283024), Employer: University of Bergen, Deadline: Friday, August 15, 2025

Have you completed an MA in literary studies? Interested in using your literary skills to research AI-generated stories? Like to work in a collaborative, innovative, friendly team? Apply for a fully funded 4-year PhD fellowship at @cdn-bergen.bsky.social at @unibergen.bsky.social in Norway!

"One in four academics also suffered moderate to severe anxiety, against a community backdrop of one in 13. Workloads played a direct role, with every excess hour increasing the risk of anxiety or depression by between 0.01 and 0.02 percentage points."

Inside Amsterdam’s high-stakes experiment to create fair welfare AI The Dutch city thought it could break a decade-long trend of implementing discriminatory algorithms. Its failure raises the question: can these programs ever be fair?

New from me @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social + Justin-Casimir Braun:

Amsterdam believed that it could build a #predictiveAI for welfare fraud that would ALSO be fair, unbiased, & a positive case study for #ResponsibleAI. It didn't work.

Our deep dive why: www.technologyreview.com/2025/06/11/1...

Civic Urban AI Expert Meeting 2025 How can urban AI be conceptualized and designed with civic aims and values like inclusiveness, accountability, and transparency in mind?

How can #urbanAI be conceptualized around #civic values?

Attend our "Governing the Digital Society" expert meeting June 19 2025 @utrechtuniversity.bsky.social w/ @ernaruijer.bsky.social & Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen

www.uu.nl/en/events/ci...

Speakers: Esther Keymolen & @mtschaefer.bsky.social