Tracing the spatial and temporal dimensions of gig platforms’ evolution: A comparative biography of Deliveroo and Upwork
Niels Beerepoot and Niels van Doorn
The Global Digital Cultures RPA is pleased to present the projects that have been granted research support funding. The new research initiatives critically explore how digitization is transforming cultural practices around the world. The projects’ interdisciplinarity, as well as their global and digital approaches, allow the awardees to establish collaboration between scholars and address urgent and relevant problems on Global Digital Cultures.
2023 Projects
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Exploring digital transformation in collaboration with indigenous communities in the Amazon Rainforest
Paula Helm, Roanne van Voorst and Beatrice Bonami -
The Geopolitics of Propaganda: On the Global Digital Culture War
M.D. Tuters, L. Bos, Boris Noordenbos -
Political Memes and Electoral Campaigning: Evidence from the 2024 Indian General Elections
Anunaya Rajhans and Neeraj Prasad -
Care suspense. Settling down to caring
Caring is normally intertwined with the mechanisms of individuation. A prior understanding of who or what in principle particularly needs to be cared for in this world somehow presupposes the fulfilment of caring. ...
2022 Projects
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‘Belong Anywhere’: The Politics of Hosting in Occupied Territories
Airbnb is a global digital platform with the aim ‘to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere’. In disputed, colonised or occupied regions, Airbnb’s activities inevitably intersect with geopolitical conflicts. ... -
The Infrastructural Politics of the Anchors of Digital Trust
The security expertise of a relatively small group of digital infrastructure elites, including experts from Big Tech, transnational corporations, and critical infrastructure providers, are increasingly setting the ... -
Data Publics and the Information Front: An Analysis of Open Source Cultures Investigating Russia’s War on Ukraine
NGOs and self-organized groups increasingly use data circulating on social media and online devices for evidence production while researching conflicts and human rights violations. This project investigates the ... -
Imagining a Crypto World: Exploring the Moral and Ideological Boundaries of Cryptocurrency Users
With an adoption rate comparable to the rise of the internet, the amount of cryptocurrency owners has climbed to more than 300 million. However, little is known to date about what makes people engage in this new type ... -
It’s Election Year Everywhere: The Digital Politics of Elections and Electioneering Amongst Brazilians Abroad
This project focuses on the digitally mediated processes through which non-resident citizens engage in Brazil’s upcoming presidential race. It asks: How do digital networks, platforms, and repertoires shape the ... -
Digitized Love and Intimacy on Hinge: FLINT* Individuals’ Dating Practices at the Cultural Nexus of Online and Offline Worlds
This project aims to investigate, through cross-cultural comparison, how digital dating apps reconfigure cultural attitudes to love and intimacy, and conversely how cultural attitudes influence digital dating ...
2021 Projects
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Encoding Identities: A Case Study of Commercial DNA Databases
This project investigates the legal aspects of digital identities operating on a global scale, and focuses on the use of commercial genealogical DNA databanks stemming from – predominantly US-based – private ... -
On Display: Negotiating Local and Global Connections on Instagram
Over the past decade, Instagram has emerged as one of the world’s most important social media platforms. Especially young people use it as a vehicle to share defining moments. The app has become a focal point for ... -
CARPA
CARPA (Crowdsourcing App for Responsible Production in Africa) aims at improving sustainable business in Africa through the development of a crowdsourcing app and website which enables local actors to report cases of ... -
Global Cultural Interference: The Case of 5G Data Infrastructures
The overall objective of the proposed project is to explore how 5G networks are represented, imagined, and entangled with significant socio-economic and political implications. We propose to research cultural ... -
From Climate Change to COVID-19: Communicating Complexity and Collective Affect through Digital Memes
How do memes simplify complex topics, making them politically legible and emotionally digestible to wide and diverse audiences on an increasingly global scale, using the techno-social affordances of social media ...
2020 Projects
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Global Boss, Local Workers?
This project explores dynamics within platform capitalism from the workers’ perspective, investigating a number of dimensions associated with workers' relation towards the platform in a global comparative fashion. It ... -
Gaming the Global City
Digital gaming has become an increasingly important everyday pastime and a leading global cultural industry, with revenues for games now far surpassing that of films. Both the production and consumption of games have ... -
Political Microtargeting on Social Media in Diverse Democracies
Digital platforms and mobile apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook have become important political tools in elections in India and other emerging democracies in the Global South but have potentially worrisome ... -
Digital Platforms and the Digitisation of Expression and Surveillance
In Europe today, digital platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, provide essential means for millions of people to express themselves, engage in public debate and organize politically. However, governments ... -
Cultural Diversity in the Age of Global Digital Media:
Today’s global digital environment challenges how media content is created, produced, distributed, and consumed, playing an increasingly important role in the construction of cultural identities. In light of the rise ... -
Global Digital Art
We focus on the intersection between categories and place, and investigate the impact on economic value. Using categorization as our theoretical lens, we study the extent to which the meaning of categories in one ... -
From Performativity to Behavioral Data
This project explores how gendered content and sexual classifications on social media come to be algorithmically aggregated and processed to regulate sexual identifications of users. Gender has been theorized as a ... -
P(R)OTESTAS
In this cross-regional research project, we critically examine the tension between digital democratization and securitization in the Global South, focusing on recent cases in Latin America (Nicaragua, Colombia) and ... -
Social Media after the Arab Uprisings
A decade after the rise of what was controversially dubbed “Facebook revolutions” in the Arab world, a critical investigation of the roles that social media platforms play in the everyday life of the region is still ...