Posts By: Michelle Oosthuyzen

Benjamin Grosser – Facebook Demetricator and the Easing of Prescribed Sociality

By Michelle Oosthuyzen, March 21, 2013

During the last session of Unlike Us #3 on the 22th of March, the focus turned to the relevant role of art in providing a critical response to the socio-political implications of social media monopolies and their centralized software. In this context, new media artist Benjamin Grosser introduced the Demetricator: a free web browser extension [...]

Tristan Thielmann – Account-Able Networking: Harold Garfinkel’s Contribution Towards a Theory of Social Media

By Michelle Oosthuyzen, March 21, 2013

Tristan Thielmann writes about the American sociologist Harold Garfinkel and his ethnomethologic approach to make traces back into the history of cybernetic theory. Today at Unlike Us #3, Thielmann argues that the socio-techniques that Garfinkel described in the 1950s remain relevant for exploring contemporary social media. As an introduction into a praxeological perspective on social [...]

Petra Löffler – A History of Distraction From a Media-Archaeological Perspective

By Michelle Oosthuyzen, March 21, 2013

Discussing the theory and critique of ‘social’ during the first session of Unlike Us #3, Petra Löffler provides us with a media-archaeological perspective on the rise of the concept of distraction; an important source of critique when it comes to mass media. By leading us through the history of distraction, Löffler shows how some of [...]

The seductive power of Facebook

By Michelle Oosthuyzen, May 24, 2012

Since the advent of social media, creating online representations as streams of personal data becomes a dominant social behavior in our contemporary society. On the online stage of Facebook, people are totally caught up in their self-performance and the drive to collect (real-time) information from others, their behaviour effectively influenced, by default invading their privacy. [...]

Interview Peter Olsthoorn: De Macht van Facebook

By Michelle Oosthuyzen, March 28, 2012

Na De macht van Google brengt internetjournalist en media expert Peter Olsthoorn nu ook de macht van Facebook voor de lezer in kaart. Dit interview gaat in op een aantal aspecten hiervan, waarbij het concept privacy in relatie tot social media centraal zal staan. Kunt u iets vertellen over de verschillende onderwerpen die in het [...]

What’s the ‘social’ in social media? An introduction of Unlike Us #2 by Geert Lovink

By Michelle Oosthuyzen, March 27, 2012

Geert Lovink enthusiastically welcomed everyone at the second Unlike Us conference on the 9th of March 2012 in Trouw Amsterdam. He begins by successfully reminding us why there is reason for us to be critical and ambitious when it comes to understanding the workings of dominant social media platforms, which centralized structures are ruling the [...]

Unlike Us #2: Interview with Jodi Dean

By Michelle Oosthuyzen, March 20, 2012

  After her inspiring view on society’s non-existence in relation to social media at the Unlike Us #2 conference on the 9th of March 2012, we got the change to ask Jodi Dean some questions to further explore ‘the social’ and the existence of social media platforms in a capitalist society. (Michelle)  Is building alternatives [...]

Bits of Freedom in Defense of Digital Civil Rights of Social Media Users

By Michelle Oosthuyzen, March 8, 2012

Representing the Dutch online civil rights organization Bits Of Freedom (BOF), Joris van Hoboken gave an overview of the organization’s work on Internet communication freedom and privacy related issues and more specifically in the context of social media. Since 2009 BOF acts as the protector of Dutch citizens’ online freedom and privacy in the digital [...]

Coralie Vogelaar: “We are our own Big Brother”

By Michelle Oosthuyzen, March 8, 2012

After the artistic and often humoristic projects of the students of the Piet Zwart institute in Rotterdam in order to criticize dominant social media platforms, Coralie Vogelaar gave us an interesting point of view on hate mail in the context of privacy. In response to the huge collection of hate mail that Vogelaars friend Tinkebell [...]

Modern-Day Privacy

By Michelle Oosthuyzen, March 5, 2012

Facebook has been accused of violating the privacy of its users over and over again and the amount of private data that Facebook is harvesting is enormous. A fact that has been proven by Law-student Max Schrems when Facebook surprisingly met his request and send him a hardcopy of all the data they ever collected [...]