Gave some commentary on the weak Esptein-4chan links for The Verge 👇
18.02.2026 19:54
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Gave some commentary on the weak Esptein-4chan links for The Verge 👇
enjoyed this "wayback studio" moment at @internetarchive.eu with @anthbrtn.com @iiil.li @idilg.bsky.social @hetsalwel.bsky.social @esthrr.bsky.social @digitalmethods.net @d-eepculture.bsky.social @publicdatalab.bsky.social @digitalculturekcl.bsky.social & many more! ✨
Together with Bastian August and Brogan Latil, I spent decidedly too much time trying to understand how Andrew Tate remains present on YouTube after his two channels were suspended.
Full paper in New Media & Society: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
A small 4CAT update just in time for the holidays - v1.52!
📊 Processors for regression analysis and dataset statistics
🧭 Test LLM prompts from our prompt library with the PromptCompass processor
🤖 Use Deepseek and Gemini 3 APIs with LLM processors
🐛 Many bug fixes!
➡️ github.com/digitalmetho...
This is ongoing work, and as Daniël mentions, we'll be hosting a "From Vectors to Vibes" reading group early next year. Open to all!
Digital rhythmanalysis emphasizes time before space and can study moments of (viral) intensity as well as everyday digital life. We bring our framing in dialogue with recent 'affective' and 'aural' turns and discuss practical examples on how to operationalize it (led to this funky baby graph).
How to move along with the audiovisual, vibey, and AI-infused feeds of today's platforms? In this new article with @ddzeeuw.bsky.social and Tommaso Venturini, we theorize 'digital rhythmanalysis' as a potential new quali-quantitative approach to measure and 'feel' rhythms online: bit.ly/pns-dra
4CAT now contains everything for quite sophisticated classification pipelines with humans and (local) LLMs!
I myself used it to classify what types of migration were mentioned in Dutch news articles (see www.groene.nl/artikel/onde...).
See all changes below 👇
Voor @groene.nl onderzochten we hoe het migratiedebat de laatste jaren is gegroeid, verhard en verbreed. We analyseerden 150.000 nieuwsartikelen en 20.000 Tweede Kamer-spreekbeurten en gebruiken een (lokale!) LLM om te zien welke migratietypen de meeste aandacht kregen.
Lees het artikel hieronder 👇
Mijn analyse over een vrolijke liberaal in een steeds rechtser land staat nu alvast online.
www.groene.nl/artikel/een-....
gefeliciteerd schier
On election day, AI Overviews are still erratic, shown in ~10% of our queries. Some issue-related queries are unanswered but "which party is for defence" recommends VVD and JA21 at the top and includes outdated stances on JSF investments and the PvdA as a separate party. Nothing on NATO norms.
Genuinely what the fuck is going on in Albania
When searching for thematic questions (e.g. 'who should I vote for if I want less taxation'), the D66 party website ranked as the top source, cited even more than Wikipedia.
For more information on the data collection, see our Deep Culture project website: deep-culture.org/google-ai-ov...
With @best.wel.moe and @nieuwsuur.nl, we studied Google's AI Overviews for political searches in the NL. We found that larger parties often benefit and that Google changed its use of AI Overviews *three times* during the run-up to the Dutch elections.
Read the article here: nos.nl/nieuwsuur/ar...
Keywords are not neutral.
With Tobias Blanke, we investigate the power of keywords as interpretive tools in our work "Keywords in Digital Humanities: A critical assessment of computational techniques for mapping security and freedom in historical debates".
You can read the article now on DHQ!
Super fun to contribute to this brief interview with Terminally Online, a student-led organization on New Media at the University of Amsterdam.
We spoke about my wonderful team‘s research (@d-eepculture.bsky.social), who inspires me, and some of my own work.
🔗: www.linkedin.com/pulse/interv...
Dit is de omgekeerde wereld. De academische vrijheid wordt bedreigd doordat onze onderzoekers die zich uitspreken in het publieke debat over “omstreden” onderwerpen als snel het doelwit worden van online bedreigingen, met name uit extreemrechtse hoek.
Critical AI seminar series Register via https://bit.ly/uvacriticalai2526 Program and Invited Speakers: Upcoming seminars November 12, 5-6:30 PM (CEST): Invited talk by Louise Amoore and Alexander Campolo, ‘On reading machine learning‘ January 13, 5:30-7 PM (CEST): Invited talk by Fabian Offert on ‘Vector Media‘ March 18, 3-4:30 (CEST): Invited talk by Helene Ratner and Nanna Thylstrup on ‘Ecologies of evaluation’ May 20, 12-1:30 PM (CEST): Invited talk by Thao Phan on ‘Testing-in-the-wild’
🚨The Critical AI Seminar Series returns in 2025/2026 ✨
This year we will have four talks and are beyond excited to welcome @amoorelouise.bsky.social & @alexcampolo.bsky.social, Fabian Offert, Helene Ratner & @nannathylstrup.bsky.social and @thaophan.bsky.social ✨
Sign up: bit.ly/uvacriticala...
Together with Marc Tuters and @robtoes.bsky.social I wrote an essay on the Charlie Kirk assassination, the Groypers - Nick Fuentes connection and the state of memetic political violence today oilab.eu/frozen-antag...
The last few weeks I worked 4CAT's LLM features. We're not free from Silicon Valley APIs yet, but you have more options in terms of providers (including Mistral) and it's also possible to use local LLMs through LM Studio and Ollama.
Check it out:
Van harte :)
This was also one of the more interesting methodologies I've worked on. We sourced ~3000 questions from 4chan and leftychan, rephrased them through LLMs, queried them on Google and Bing, and scraped the SERP contents through Selenium, 4CAT, and Zoekplaatje.
Code: github.com/sal-uva/radi...
Google relies heavily on Reddit, showing up in 75% of SERPs(!). Controversial topics that are not enriched are thus often "relayed" to the amateur interpretations of Redditors (see below).
We call for continued SERP audits to interrogate the volatility of enrichment amidst changing political tides.
We find that controversial searches get less components. Some keywords were even blacklisted from enrichment altogether, including "trump" and "biden".
This suggests Google and Bing tend avoid burning their fingers on certain political topics, raising concerns on the reliability of these systems.
🔎New paper! Guillén Torres and I study "enrichment" on Google and Bing as a form of content moderation.
Main finding: enrichment can be erratic, with components like "AI Overviews" even being banned for certain political queries like those including "trump".
Pre-print: ssrn.com/abstract=528...
Components added to Google and Bing for controversial and non-controverisal queries
Components added to Google and Bing by controversiality and toxicity
Components added to Google and Bing by different categories
We find that controversial searches get less components. Some keywords were even blacklisted from enrichment altogether, including "trump" and "biden".
This suggests Google and Bing tend avoid burning their fingers on certain political topics, raising concerns on the reliability of these systems.
nos.nl artikelen met verwijzingen naar klimaatverandering en Ten Hag
Op nos.nl ging de laatste vijftien jaar even vaak over klimaatverandering als over Erik ten Hag.
(2853 vs. 2766 artikelen/updates)
@xrnl.bsky.social @nieuws.nos.nl
van harte!!
Tired of looking at Excel rows when investigating social media data? 4CAT's new Explorer feature is here to help!