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textaural.bsky.social
Assistant Professor in New Media Histories at UvA. Index curator of Keywords for Studying Media, Culture & Information. https://textaural.com/keywords/. I study musty old encyclopedias, utopian computation, design and consensus politics, often all at once.
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We are delighted to share the publication of Risky Research: An AoIR Guide to Researcher Protection and Safety, the culmination of over two years of collaborative effort by the AoIR Risky Research Working Group. aoir.org/riskyresearc...

I had the pleasure of attending a fantastic symposium by our MA students on Friday about Vibes. And it got me thinking about the connections between vibes (or atmospheres) and our other focus on infrastructures and platforms. Just jotted down some preliminary ideas about it.

Nice work here! I really like seeing more of these kinds of histories that highlight the heterogeneous nature of platform users adapting a technical capacity for their own practices -- something I attempted myself: doi.org/10.1080/2470...

Made a small edit to @timothysnyder.bsky.social's _On Tyranny_.

I have amazing (and prolific) colleagues at UvA's New Media and Digital Culture program and I wanted to get a better sense of what they have been doing since 2024. So I collected all of their work in one handy spot. I will try to keep it up to date 2-3 times a year. textaural.com/uva_NMDC/

Super pleased with student's responses this week to our Histories of Digital Cultures - Doing History Playlist w/ featured work by @valeriesch.bsky.social @textfiles.com @loriemerson.net @adamegriff.bsky.social @ktmac.bsky.social @katecrawford.bsky.social and others. textaural.com/uva_HDC/play...

My grandfather was a nuclear engineer at Los Alamos in the late 40s. They would do nuclear tests in the desert, and watch them from a "safe" distance of a few miles. They would shield their eyes by burying their heads in the crooks of their arms. He said he could see his bones with his eyes shut.

one rule of internet discourse: every time cobol is back in the news, i am required to share this brilliant piece from @histoftech.bsky.social logicmag.io/care/built-t...

Finalizing our syllabus for "Histories of Digital Culture" (it includes discussing work of @kdriscoll.aoir.social.ap.brid.gy @loriemerson.net @ktmac.bsky.social @katecrawford.bsky.social, @gabrielebalbi.bsky.social). I'm making a music playlist for the students, and would love some suggestions!

Does anyone know who owns the copyright of the portrait that is to be removed from the Colorado State Capitol? Is it public domain?

Just updated the Keywords for MCI Index with entries on the Internet, Business & Monetization, and Extractivism. textaural.com/keywords/

I happened upon Ubuweb in the late 90s, as I finished college. Sometimes, years went by when I forgot it was there, and then I'd remember + celebrate its existence. In this age of anti-intellectualism + censorship, of transactional relationships + extraction + joylessness, I say: 🙌 💫🌈 Ubu.

@clivethompson.bsky.social fyi

No one blogs anymore (maybe it's all podcasts now–still). But I am quite inspired by Alex Galloway's blog where he published excerpts from his book. Such a nice form of academic communication that increases access but not at the expense of doing more work cultureandcommunication.org/galloway/one...

Just two more days until the deadline to submit to our CFP on Utopian Media Studies! textaural.com/utopianmedia.... We can't wait to read your hopeful abstracts about where we can take media studies next. 500 words due March 1.

Always bibliographize. "If you seek knowledge without responsibility, please skip past the [bibliography] that follows." Taraneh Fazeli and Cannach MacBride in "As for Protocols" www.fulcrum.org/concern/mono...

A new article I coauthored with @darthvetter.bsky.social is out today in AI and Society, "An Endangered Species: How LLMs threaten Wikipedia's sustainability" #wikipedia #wikiresearch link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Lots of new stuff!

I have a few new MA students writing about digital advertising, aesthetics, subcultures, and AI. So I thought it was time to update my keywords index to aid their research with concepts from "Designing in Dark Times" and "Digital Roots." Some really nice work in both books. textaural.com/keywords/

CFP Reminder Convergence Special Issue Utopian Media Studies: Research for collective forms of becoming otherwise New media scholars do not just diagnose current issues around media (🤖) they also provide strategies for hope (✨). 📝 500 word abstracts 1 March 2025 textaural.com/utopianmediastudies/

If you are studying #misinformation #factchecking and asking broader questions about our information ecosystem, you should be reading Heather Ford's "Writing the Revolution" (2022). It has a fantastic theory of the fact. I reviewed it for Information & Culture. muse.jhu.edu/pub/15/artic...

@depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social Can you hear me now? commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ca...