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Res Publica ex Machina: On Neocybernetic Governance and the End of Politics

In 2017, Denmark sent the first digital ambassador, Casper Klynge, to Silicon Valley. The aim of this move of ‘techplomacy’ was, as Klynge explained, not simply to distribute greetings notes by the Danish queen. Rather, the intention was to ‘update diplomacy’ based on the recognition that a few tech companies have obviously become much ‘more influential than some nation states’. Klynge framed the new political course in the manner of a well-known old but still utterly contemporary mantra: ‘There is no alternative’. In a similar vein, Denmark’s Foreign Minister Anders Samuelson highlighted the importance of the step as follows: ‘Just as we engage in a diplomatic dialogue with countries, we also need to establish and prioritize comprehensive relations with tech actors, such as Google, Facebook, Apple, and so on. (…) The idea is, we see a lot of companies and new technologies that will in many ways involve and be part of everyday life of citizens in Denmark.'

Profession or craft? A reflection on the moral identity of Social Work

Wat is de beroepsidentiteit van sociaal werk, wat behoort zij te zijn? Sociaal werk wordt wel omschreven als een professie maar ook als een ambacht, vaak zonder duidelijk onderscheid tussen en wellicht zelfs door impliciete gelijkstelling van deze kwalificaties. Met behulp van de ideaaltypische benadering kan echter worden aangetoond dat deze twee typen beroepen niet alleen veel overeenkomsten delen maar ook op enkele punten fundamenteel van elkaar verschillen. Op basis van het werk van Freidson (2001) en Sennett (2008) kan worden aangetoond dat het ideaaltypische doel van professies het realiseren van een abstracte waarde (zoals rechtvaardigheid) is, terwijl ambachten gericht zijn op het manipuleren van concrete materialen (bijvoorbeeld steen). Bijgevolg zijn (enkel) professies beroepen met een morele identiteit. In alle zelfdefinities van sociaal werk is deze morele identiteit, deze humanitaire kern aanwezig (zie bv. IFSW, NVMW). Daarom moet sociaal werk worden beschouwd als een professie en niet als een ambacht. Dit is niet louter een academische discussie maar beïnvloedt bijvoorbeeld de positie van dit beroep in de samenleving, zoals aan de hand van de ministeriële richtlijnen betreffende Welzijn Nieuwe Stijl kan worden geïllustreerd.

Revisiting the ‘fallacy of meaningfulness’

In media audience research we tend to assume that media are engaged with when they are used, however ‘light’ such engagement might be. Once ‘passive media use’ was banned as a reference to media use, being a media audience member became synonymous with being a meaning producer. In audience research however I find that media are not always the object of meaning making in daily life and that media texts can be hardly meaningful. Thinking about media and engagement, there is a threefold challenge in relation to audience research. The coming into being of platform media and hence of new forms of media production on a micro level that come out of and are woven into practices of media use, suggests that we need to redraft the repertoire of terms used in audience research (and maybe start calling it something else). Material and immaterial media production, the unpaid labour on the part of otherwise audience members should for instance be taken into account. Then, secondly, there is the continuing challenge to further develop heuristically strong ways of linking media use and meaning making, and most of all to do justice, thirdly, to those moments and ways in which audiences truly engage with media texts without identifying them with those texts.

Sad by Design (the essay)

The Islamic State unfiltered

Instagram has become an unsuspecting pulpit ­– seemingly caught off guard – for those determined to spread a militant message of Islamic State terror. Graphic, fanatical and oftentimes heavily photoshopped images weave through Instagram’s labyrinth of sunset snaps and gym selfies to advance a curious manifestation of cause-related self-promotion.

Videoblogging before YouTube

In Videoblogging Before YouTube, Trine Bjørkmann Berry offers a cultural history of online video, focusing on the critical moment when the internet moved from being a mostly textual medium to a truly multimedia one. Through a close analysis of the early videoblogging community and their creative practices, she argues that early in the new millennium a new cultural-technical media hybrid emerged. This coalesced around the short-form digital film whose aesthetic, technical form and content is a predecessor to, and anticipator of our current media ecology.