Associate Professor of Media, Data & Society
A new book chapter by Anne Helmond and Fernando van der Vlist in Digital Media Metaphors (edited by Johan Farkas and Marcus Maloney), http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781032674612-4 This chapter explores the metaphorical ‘tapestry’ of meanings woven into the ‘platform’ metaphor, tracing its journey from a technical term in the computing sphere to a central concept in digital media.… Read more Platform: A Tapestry of Meanings and Metaphors
With ten researchers affiliated with universities in the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Sweden, conducting research on digital infrastructures and communication, we wrote a joint submission in response to the European Commission’s White Paper ‘How to master Europe’s digital infrastructure needs?’. We structure our response to this consultation process along four key demands. European policy-making… Read more Governing Digital Infrastructures for a Secure and Sustainable Future
A new open access article by Fernando van der Vlist, Anne Helmond, and Fabian Ferrari in: Big Data & Society, https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517241232630. Big AI: Cloud Infrastructure and the Industrialisation of AI In this paper we study the convergence of AI and Big Tech (or ‘Big AI’), and AI’s ‘industrialization’, i.e. its transition from R&D to real-world… Read more Big AI: Cloud Infrastructure and the Industrialisation of AI
A new open access article by Fernando van der Vlist, Anne Helmond, Michael Dieter, and Esther Weltevrede in: New Media & Society, https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231223419. Super-Appification: Conglomeration in the Global Digital Economy “In this study, we offer a distinct, global overview of ‘super apps’, enabling comparative analysis of their characteristics and origins worldwide, and paving the way… Read more Super-Appification: Conglomeration in the Global Digital Economy
A new open access article by Johannes Paßmann, Anne Helmond, and Robert Jansma in Internet Histories. We use data from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to examine online commenting system Disqus’ shifting discourse about comment moderation and its increasing modes of platform interventionism. Crucially, we find that in the case of Disqus, the toxic is… Read more From healthy communities to toxic debates: Disqus’ changing ideas about comment moderation
Application programming interfaces (APIs) are not merely technical objects for data access but have evolved into complex governance arrangements. We examine the relationship between the ‘technicity’ of platform governance–”governance of and by APIs–and the material conditions of a platform’s power. A new open access article by Fernando van der Vlist, Anne Helmond, Marcus Burkhardt, and… Read more API Governance: The Case of Facebook’s Evolution