PhD Researchers

Jeroen Boom | Radboud University Nijmegen
European cities have been privileged sites for thematizations of modernity, progress, and national identity. What happens at the margins of these cities tends to acquire less attention. This research aims to map the production of urban peripheries in contemporary cinema from a trans-European perspective in order to understand the political, aesthetic and affective dimensions of marginality across and amidst local expressions of urban deprivation. Europe’s urban outskirts have long been seen as either a violent spectacle or a placeless wasteland in the shadows of the city-center.

Anna Marieke Weerdmeester | Utrecht University
This projects investigates the responsibilities of social media platforms, as gatekeepers of information, to protect European citizens’ right to receive information.

Carmen Longas Luque | Erasmus University Rotterdam
Sports media is able to attract large audiences and in Europe, this is particularly the case with televised football. Despite journalism’s strive for objectivity, discourses in live coverages or post-match highlights may convey ideas that help produce and reproduce common stereotypes about race and ethnicity. While in other countries a difference in how football players are portrayed based on race/ethnicity has already been reported, it is still unknown whether this also applies to Spanish televised football.

Lucie Chateau | Tilburg University
This project concerns the deliberative potential of digital public spheres and the possibility of finding a space for a critique of capitalism online, and the forms this critique might embody. To this, I will need to address the obstacles standing in the way of formulating a critique of ideology online.

This research aims to tackles the question: What is the current view on algorithmic accountability within municipalities, (how) do they practice it, and how can this practice be improved? The first part of the investigation will thus sketch a general overview of algorithmic accountability, in collaboration with VNG Realisatie. Aside from this national picture, the project will also look into a concrete case: the algorithmic fraud detection system implemented by several municipalities to screen those who receive benefits (Hijink 2018), which were the topic of recent parliamentary discussion (Security.nl 2018).

Veerle Ros | University of Groningen
The idea that photographic and filmic images contain traces of historical or actual reality has long been thought of as central to documentary’s defining quality as a ‘document’ of historical reality. This paradigm proved untenable in the face of arguments concerning the inherently constructed nature of representations, given additional momentum amidst the current digitization of visual media.

Qiong Gong | Erasmus University Rotterdam
My project ‘Social media usage and its impacts on young adults in China’ focus on the effects of social media use on the attitudes of young adults (18-40-year-old) towards politics, arts and culture and health related issues. The focus is on the case of China: a country with a state-controlled media system, in which during the past decades a highly diversified media ecology of social media platforms has emerged.

Ornella Porcu | University of Groningen and Hogeschool Windesheim
The aim of this project is to empirically explore the concept of Innovative Learning Culture (ILC) in the Dutch newspaper newsroom.

Sofie Willemsen | University of Groningen
My research takes up an embodied, spatio-temporal perspective on our daily mediated realities. It focuses on the moving trajectories in space and time of people and their media devices. The central question I wish to ask and tentatively explore, is whether and how media materials can help us shape sustainable forms of togetherness.

Advan Navis Zubaidi | VU University
There are various representations of disabled people on TV programs. Those representations may affect the way viewers interact with disabled people in daily life. In Indonesia, the disabled were often involved in three different genres; telenovela, talk shows, and reality show. It could be argued that involving the disabled may easily attract viewers’ attention.

Sjors Martens | Utrecht University
Games addressing citizens are increasing in number. Matching this increase are new and recurring narratives about what the city is. Cities have been called Smart, playful, sustainable, hackable, social – all names that determine the roles of cities and actions of their citizens. In my research I argue that the city games developed to foster these city ideas are initially informed by (sometimes implicit) values about the city.

Roel Lutkenhaus | Erasmus University Rotterdam, Center for Media & Health, Gouda
The Entertainment-Education (EE) strategy uses popular media to engage with target audiences on health-related topics such as condom use, drug addiction, or hearing loss. Traditionally, health (communication) professionals have collaborated with creative professionals such as script writers, directors, or producers to develop effective and appealing EE interventions for radio and TV. However, the media landscape has saturated and the Internet has afforded target audiences to create and circulate content themselves.

Raquel Raj | University of Groningen
All video games grant agency to their players, requiring active participation to move the game and narrative forward. Yet this participation is heavily structured and bounded by game rules and code. The tension between the structures of participation in video games, and the ways in which players negotiate the rules of play has the potential to illustrate not only how games work, and how games can work for us, but also offer insight into structures of participation in the non-virtual world.

Guillén Torres | University of Amsterdam
My research focuses on how activists experience the reluctance of certain governmental institutions to welcome them in decision-making process. I am particularly interested in how institutions handle information requests in ways that prevents citizens from accessing public sector information that would allow them to either hold the government accountable or influence public policy

Henry Chow | Erasmus University Rotterdam
The idea behind media tourism is simple: the media we consume influences what places we know about and how we feel about those places. Because of that, it also shapes our decisions to travel and the entire tourism experience, from planning the trip to retelling our travel stories afterwards. South Korean television drama series (‘K-drama’) adds an interesting case to the study of media tourism. As a relative newcomer to the global television arena, it has attracted a devout following in East Asia and beyond within two decades. While the Korean media industry have grown into a transnational network, as a strategic industry it retains strong linkages to the national government.