Associate Professor of Media, Data & Society
An opening statement prepared for the RESAW25 conference, 5-6 June, University of Siegen, Germany. A History of Researching the Datafied Web It’s a real pleasure to return to the RESAW conference, and to Siegen. We were asked to contemplate a deceptively simple question: how did the web become datafied? To begin, we should ask: what… Read more A History of Researching the Datafied Web
Fernando van der Vlist (Universiteit van Amsterdam) en ik waren te gast in de Verrekijkers-podcast van het Rathenau Instituut, waar we spraken over wat we tegenwoordig “AI” noemen. AI is in feite een complex ecosysteem van digitale én fysieke componenten – een zogeheten “AI stack” – waarvan we via populaire interfaces zoals ChatGPT slechts het… Read more De verborgen wereld achter AI (Rathenau Podcast)
We have a new edited Open Access book out with Amsterdam University Press: José van Dijck, Karin van Es, Anne Helmond, and Fernando van der Vlist (eds) (2025) Governing the Digital Society: Platforms, Artificial Intelligence, and Public Values. Amsterdam University Press. It features 15 chapters from excellent researchers from our interdisciplinary research focus area Governing… Read more Governing the Digital Society: Platforms, Artificial Intelligence, and Public Values
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