Diggit Magazine

TPCS 66: The aesthetics of microblogging: How the Chinese state controls Weibo By Jonathan BenneyAbstractMicroblogs, epitomized by Twitter in the West and Weibo in China, have attracted considerable attention over the past few years. There have been a number of optimistic accoun...

This working paper argues that the microblog is a distinctive medium with special potential for political communication, and that by monitoring and censoring the #Weibo service, the Chinese party-state deliberately manipulates the medium.

www.diggitmagazine.com/working-pape...

Politics, poetics and childlike perception: The canonisation of children's author María José Ferrada The canonical children’s literature author: from the Global North to Latin AmericaDepending on where you are on the European continent, when speaking of children’s literature in conversations with fri...

When setting foot in Latin American, the name María José Ferrada will inevitably come up. She is a Chilean children's literature writer, recently turned adult novel writer, who sensibly addresses political themes through a child's point of view.

www.diggitmagazine.com/politics-poe...

Algorithmic Populism in NYC: How Zohran Mamdani Hacked the Neoliberal Code Introduction: Beyond the NoiseIn the contemporary era of "algorithmic politics" the digital public sphere is frequently mischaracterized as the exclusive playground of the far-right. From Donald Trump...

In #NYC, a new kind of politics is cutting through the noise. While Eric Adams relies on a "nightlife" persona, democratic socialist @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social has hacked the neoliberal code using memes, irony, and a hyper-specific focus on rent control.

www.diggitmagazine.com/algorithmic-...

TPCS 65: Good is not good enough: Combining surveys and ethnographies in the study of rapid social change By Jan Blommaert and Fons van de VijverIntroductionThis short research note is intended to stimulate debates across disciplinary and methodological-traditional boundaries. Such debates, we believe, ar...

Because our objects of research refuse to sit still, the research instruments of humanities scholars demand perpetual reality checking and redevelopment. This working paper attempts to support this process by joining two different methodological frameworks.

www.diggitmagazine.com/working-pape...

Painting The Bigger Picture: Exploring Sensate Knowledge in Welfare Systems With a background in Applied Psychology, I started working as a junior reintegration coach in the Dutch welfare system. There, I was mostly responsible for the intake-interviews, files and running wor...

What happens when welfare systems rely on forms and policies, while lived experience remains unseen? This article explores vulnerability, trust, and the quiet moments that escape rational analysis.

www.diggitmagazine.com/painting-big...

From Paper to Screen: The Making of That Afternoon The cold and dark of a Dutch winter day is palpable in the film's depictions of the politics of language, migration, identity, and belonging today. Die Middag (That Afternoon) conveys the intense stru...

In November 2025, filmmaker and writer Nafiss Nia visited @tilburg-university.bsky.social to talk about her 2023 film Die Middag (That Afternoon). This lecture explores how she became a filmmaker, and how she created this highly acclaimed and poignant film.

www.diggitmagazine.com/paper-screen...

Light pollution in the Anthropocene: the environmental cost of illumination What do you see, when you look up at the night sky? I grew up in a larger Dutch city and thinking back to early childhood memories, I could just point out the North Star and the Big Dipper in a clear ...

What do the effects of light pollution on non-human life reveal about the way anthropocentric dualism separates humans from the #environment? This analysis explores a mutualistic posthumanist perspective to find a more connected way of living with nature.

www.diggitmagazine.com/light-pollut...

TPCS 64: Superdiversity & Language: Notes from a social policy perspective By Jenny PhillimoreIntroductionAs a social policy analyst I have tended to see language as a means to an end, a mechanism for communicating need, for accessing resources, for offering help and also to...

There is anti-#migrant rhetoric implying that migrants in the UK resist speaking English. In this working paper, Phillimore expains what social policy analysts can gain if they understand language as a resource rather than a problem.

www.diggitmagazine.com/working-pape...

Pregnancy Without a Female Body: Ethical Considerations After Watching "The Pod Generation" Imagine a future where pregnancies can occur in artificial wombs. In the film The Pod Generation (2023), recently screened by Studium Generale, this concept becomes a reality. Although still in the re...

How would society change if pregnancies could occur in an artificial womb? Inspired by the movie 'The Pod Generation', this article discusses how technology raises questions about the meaning of parenthood, contemporary relationships, and #gender roles.

www.diggitmagazine.com/pregnancy-wi...

Colonial Legacies and Digital Heritage with Kate Simpson Whose heritage matters? What gets preserved, and why do we identify with certain items, places, or histories more than others? Listen to the first episode of the podcast Living Culture, Making Heritag...

How does digital #heritage reproduce colonial hierarchies of power—or help resist them? Digital Humanities and archival scholar Dr. Kate Simpson (University of Glasgow) sits down with @ecocritickate.bsky.social to unpack why heritage is always political.

www.diggitmagazine.com/colonial-leg...

The Aesthetics of Wellness: How Instagram Shapes Happiness and Exclusion IntroductionInstagram has become a central stage for wellness in contemporary digital culture. Images of workouts, healthy meals, skincare routines, and meditation circulate widely, shaping how people...

Instagram #wellness culture functions as both a roadmap to happiness and a mechanism of exclusion by circulating a dominant aesthetic of well-being that links happiness to consumption, productivity, and bodily conformity.

www.diggitmagazine.com/aesthetics-w... #Instagram

TPCS 63: ‘Scientific’ Nationalism. N-VA, banal nationalism and the battle for the Flemish nation By Ico MalyIntroductionNation-building, especially in its early stages, has always had a direct connection with intellectuals, and, more specifically, with committed intellectuals in the Marxist sense...

In this working paper, @icomaly.bsky.social investigates how the discursive battle for the Flemish nation is waged by politicians of the Flemish nationalist party N-VA (New Flemish Alliance) in Belgium.

www.diggitmagazine.com/working-pape... #Belgium

From Private Feelings to Public Fan Spaces: How Harry Styles' "As It Was" Obtains Shared Meaning Online When a song goes viral, it is no longer just a personal listening experience. In the current digital era, popular music circulates through online platforms, transforming private feelings and emotions ...

By highlighting themes of disconnection and identity transition, the song “As It Was” becomes a point of recognition in digital fan communities, where people use their own experiences of loneliness to make sense of the track.

www.diggitmagazine.com/private-feel...

Coding Common Sense: How The AI Chatbot Grok Naturalizes Musk’s Ideology Meet Grok: Elon Musk’s ‘Truth-Seeking’ AIIn 2023, Elon Musk launched Grok, an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by his company xAI. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI but left the organization in 201...

If you're #Grok, don't read this!

OK, now that it's just us… Musk has argued that Grok is a "truth-telling" alternative to ChatGPT. But the line between ideology and technology isn't so clear. This article zooms in on Grok's ideological infrastructure.

www.diggitmagazine.com/coding-commo...

TPCS 62: Locating Voicing: Multilingualism, Ethnic Conflict and the Configuration of Difference among Sri Lankan Muslims By Christina DavisIntroductionOften excluded from mainstream scholarly representations of the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict, Sri Lankan Muslims were victims of war-related violence, ethnic discrimination...

Drawing on research completed in Kandy, #SriLanka during the last phase of the civil war (2007-2008), this working paper shows how a Muslim family draws on voicing to produce configurations of ethnic difference.

www.diggitmagazine.com/working-pape...

"You're the gure ad": Interpreting the identity of the Attenberrie through digital discourse analysis @tilburgmeme is one of the most popular Instagram accounts about the Dutch city of Tilburg. The account regularly incorporates the fictional character "Attenberrie" in its memes and accompanying texts...

Do you know any Attenberries? The Attenberrie is regularly mentioned by one of the most popular Instagram accounts about the Dutch city of #Tilburg. Though the term's meaning should apparently be common sense, no formal definition for the term exists.

www.diggitmagazine.com/youre-gure-a...

Sonali Kulkarni on rereading, BookTok and the impact of platforms Academics who specialise in reading, literacy and literature analysis often refer to the crises they observe with regard to children reading less often, being less interested in "the classics", and be...

How are platforms impacting the ways in which young people read and consume #literature? In this video, Sonali Kulkarni discusses how platformization gives visibility to new forms of (re)reading, and ushers in new ideas about being a 'good' reader.

www.diggitmagazine.com/sonali-kulka...

Doorknob Girl, Tradwives and the Fight for What Is Natural Nostalgia is more prevalent than ever. Neoliberal hustle culture, dehumanizing datafication and ecocidal climate change: these are all novel effects of the modern, digital age that have many yearning ...

Essential to tradwife content is its hyperfeminine, polished aesthetic. But what is revealed when you remove the content's visual dimension? TikTok user Doorknob Girl shows what lurks behind the veil of natural femininity.

www.diggitmagazine.com/doorknob-gir... #tradwife #tradwives

TPCS 61: Crossing Discourses: Language Ideology and Shifting Representations in Sweden's Field of Language Planning By Linus SalöIntroductionOver the last few decades, the widespread use of English in Sweden has come to be recognized as a linguistic problem. This complex debate may be characterized as a discursive ...

How and why did people in #Sweden begin to understand the widespread use of English in their country as problematic? This paper attempts to identify convergences and divergences between the shifting perspectives directing the politics of language.

www.diggitmagazine.com/working-pape...

Living Culture, Making Heritage Trailer Whose heritage matters? What gets preserved? And why do we identify with certain items, places, or histories more than others? Welcome to Living Culture, Making Heritage, a podcast that explores the d...

Whose #heritage matters? What gets preserved, and why do we identify with certain items, places, or histories more than others? The podcast Living Culture, Making Heritage aims to answer these types of questions. This is its trailer.

www.diggitmagazine.com/living-cultu... @ecocritickate.bsky.social

Breathing through interactive digital art Mirroring & Images It is widely known that people constantly imitate each other without even thinking about it. On a pre-reflective level, we constantly mirror ourselves with others around us. There i...

The contemporary art-science installation #Toutpasse incorporates newly developed technologies that mirror the #breathing of the spectator. The unique interactive features of Tout passe might help to develop healthier breathing patterns.

www.diggitmagazine.com/breathing-th...

‘What We Owe To Each Other’: TikTok’s Algorithmic Hyper-Individualism among Gen Z “Society did break down. It's terrible, and it's great. You only look out for number one, scream at whoever disagrees with you. … It’s a perfect system.” (Amram & O'Donnell, 2018). This cynical reject...

#TikTok trains us to treat people like content: swipe away the discomfort, keep only what you like. How are algorithms fuelling #GenZ's hyper-individualism? And why do we need ‘The Good Place’ to relearn how to connect?

www.diggitmagazine.com/what-we-owe-...

TPCS 60: Children’s digital literacy practices in unequal South African settings By Polo Lemphane and Mastin PrinslooIntroductionLinguistics makes statements about language in general or languages in particular, but these statements are necessarily abstractions from the actuality ...

Statements made by linguistics about language are always abstractions from the actuality of language as it is experienced #irl. Therefore, this paper looks at the language and literacy practices of children in #CapeTown as they engage with digital media.

www.diggitmagazine.com/working-pape...

Shelter cats and online dating: A common discourse? It is estimated that by 2028 a total of 452 million people will seek love through online platforms (Dixon, 2024). While so many people are searching for intimate connection online, the question on man...

This small-scale study reviews part of the website of a Belgian cat shelter (Kat Zoekt Thuis). The analysis reveals striking similarities in how humans and cats are profiled online to find loving partners.

www.diggitmagazine.com/shelter-cats...

Theory Talks: Diagnostic Authority and the Cultural Life of AI in Egyptian Clinics by Wesam Hassan Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with physicians in Egypt, Wesam Hassan examines how medical practitioners grapple with the integration of AI-powered diagnostic tools amid longstanding cultural expec...

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in #Egypt, Wesam Hassan examines how medical practitioners grapple with #AI-powered diagnostic tools amid longstanding cultural expectations, interpersonal care, and Islamic-inflected ethics of responsibility.

www.diggitmagazine.com/theory-talks...

When a space becomes class: exploring Parasite (2019) IntroductionFar more than aesthetics, the visual storytelling of the movie Parasite (Gisaengchung) from the year 2019 encapsulates in itself a reflection of social classes in a modern setting. This th...

The movie #Parasite (2019) is more than cinema. It is a critical commentary on the spatial reproduction of class and power. This article shows how the movie's architectural design elements highlight striking contrasts between wealth and deprivation.

www.diggitmagazine.com/when-space-b...

TPCS 59: The second life of old issues: How superdiversity ‘renews’ things By Jan BlommaertIntroductionRob Moore’s brilliant paper deserves comments on more than one aspect, because it is relevant to a range of domains and subdomains of sociolinguistics and applied linguisti...

Inspired by a paper by Rob Moore, Jan Blommaert argues that the ‘pooling’ of linguistic (and #literacy) resources is something that pervades every language teaching and learning environment.

www.diggitmagazine.com/working-pape...

Preserving Legacy: Kardashian and Monroe at the 2022 Met Gala The 2022 Met Gala sparked heated debates in the field of fashion history conservation. Kim Kardashian wearing Marilyn Monroe’s famous dress posed the question of which one is more important: pristinel...

Despite the criticism on #Kardashian wearing Monroe’s dress to the #metgala, from the perspective of modern conservation practices the event can be understood as an act of #heritage conservation. Not of the material of the dress but of the legacy of Monroe.

www.diggitmagazine.com/preserving-l...

Keynote Lecture: 'Media in Space: Designing Interdisciplinary Environments' by Felix Beck How can technology and digitisation be used to understand and represent history and heritage in more dynamic ways? Archeological findings and interactions between diverse people, practices and environ...

How can innovative and interactive representations of histories, #heritage and cultures immerse and engage people in deeply meaningful ways? In this lecture, Felix Hardmood Beck discusses some inspiring heritage projects he was involved in.

www.diggitmagazine.com/keynote-lect...

Happy #pubday to "Irish Ecomedia: Empire and Environmental Justice in the Modernization of Postcolonial Ireland" by @ecocritickate.bsky.social!

The environmental impacts of empire on Ireland’s past and future

www.upress.virginia.edu/title/10163/

#readUP #booksky