Graduate School of Humanities on Social Media

There are several ways to stay up to date via social media.

Do you have to be able to say everything on Twitter and Facebook? Is Instagram morally obliged to remove photos from attacks? Should we allow the terrorist group to recruit new members on the internet?

LIACS is a partner in RISE_SMA, an interdisciplinary, international network combining excellent scholars and practitioners to enable vigorous knowledge sharing and to develop solutions for contemporary challenges for Social Media Analytics (SMA).

The availability of indicators based on social media has opened the possibility to track the online interactions between social media users and scholarly entities.

This paper written by Vydra and Kantorowicz answers the research question ‘What policy-relevant information does Twitter contain?’ as well as the research question ‘How does this information change between a period of normalcy and a period of crisis?’

Nowadays children grow up with social media. This may influence the development of brain regions involved in social interaction. In their review article in Nature Communications, Crone and Konijn illustrate how neuroscience can contribute to a better understanding of how media and peers influence adolescents'…

Both play and politics have the potential to create worlds in which new rules apply, meanings are created, and possibilities emerge for collaboration, strategy and creative solutions. In this sense, play and politics have always been very much alike. But what happens to this kinship in a post-digital…

On 11 January 2019, Maastricht University and the University of Groningen hosted a workshop on the regulation of social media influencers.

From a successful April Fool’s prank and alumni love stories to a fabulous float on 3 Octobe: these were the highlights of our year on our social media channels. Hope you’re following us?

It’s been a turbulent, bizarre and extraordinary year, 2020. Coronavirus turned the lives of everyone at our University upside down. Out teaching, research and all the events that are held in a year: nothing was the same as before. That this affected all of us is clear from the highlights and many reactions…

Africa is online. Leiden Africa expert Mirjam de Bruijn is fascinated by the fast development of mobile telephony and social media in Africa. She maintains a website on the topic, focusing on isolated, marginalised and conflict-ridden areas in Middle Africa.

Milou Deelen (24) rapidly rose to prominence as the Dutch advocate of frank talk about women’s sexuality. It has cost her dear, but she has received so much assent, praise and support that she won’t be giving up anytime soon. In the Annie Romein Verschoor Lecture on 5 March, Leiden University’s celebration…

Since January 2019, The Leiden Institute for Advanced Computer Science is part of the RISE_SMA project. In this European project 6 universities, in collaboration with companies, government authorities and NGOs, will join forces to get more insight in social media data during crisis situations. The kick-off…

Turbulent times in Italy: Deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini wants new elections so that he can become prime minister himself. He is campaigning on social media, including photos of himself posing in his swimming trunks.

Jelle van Buuren, university lecturer at ISGA, discusses the role that social media played in the storming of the Capitol last Wednesday

Our researcher and PhD candidate Helena Ursic was interviewed with Druzina, one of the biggest weekly newspapers in Slovenia.

Find out who to contact with press enquiries and how we tell the world our news.

'Academics who share their knowledge with the outside world on social media are often insulted or even threatened. Especially female academics and academics of colour seem to regularly be the victim of sexist and racist comments.' This is what Ineke Sluiter, Professor of Greek Language and Literature…

Commentators and scholars view both social media and cities as sites of fragmentation. Since both urban dwellers and social media users tend to form assortative social ties, so the reasoning goes, identity-based divisions are fortified and polarization is exacerbated in digital and urban spaces.

Sara Polak, American Studies expert and University Lecturer investigates how American presidents deal with the media and how new, social media influence our collective memory and the political game. ‘Social media algorithms influence us and our political choices in ways we do not foresee’, Polak say…

The research project Authoritarianism 2.0, funded by the European Research Council, invites eligible research institutions to submit applications. The successful subcontractor will conduct a nationally representative survey on Internet and social media use in the People’s Republic of China, relying…

What insights do eleven social Facebook-accounts of Dutch and Belgic foreign fighters offer with respect to the phenomenon of so-called returnees?

The Leiden Lectures in Media | Art | Politics (MAP) is a series of talks organized by Pepita Hesselberth and Yasco Horsman. Speakers from various academic backgrounds and in different stages of their careers reflect on diverging ways in which technological and social changes challenge and transform…

Covid year 2021 might have felt somewhat less strange than the year before, but the virus still left its mark on University life and our students and staff. Fortunately there was also room for research, visiting dignitaries and in-person classes. And our social media accounts weren’t only about covid…

Taking as a point of departure the Italian American community in Boston and its process of collective remembrance surrounding Saint Anthony’s Feast, we address the limits and potential of montage.

Digital media are everywhere and are therefore a major part of our lives and the lives of our children. The new specialisation in Digital Media in Human Development focuses on the opportunities and challenges of digital media in child rearing and education.

How do old and new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) relate to new social and political movements in Central Africa? What does this tell us about Africa and the Information Age?

Yuxi Nie defended her thesis on 15 October 2019.

Recently Cambridge University Press published dr. Jan Osters monograph “Media Freedom as a Fundamental Right”.

This book is the first to incorporate current academic literature and case law on European, transnational, and international media law into a comprehensive overview intended primarily for students.

We do not only welcome the public, but also the press is cordially invited.

How new media shape the communication strategies of the PRC’s official news agency Xinhua?

This article introduces the special issue on ‘Digital Activism’ by exploring some of the trends in social media activism and scholarship thereof. The authors ask to what extent this literature helps us understand Asian forms of online activism, which forms of activism have relatively done well, and…

Visual art today is strongly interlinked with today’s society, a connection which is reinforced and deepened by social and other media. In Arts, Media and Society, a specialisation of our Art History bachelor's programme, you will explore this relationship and analyse how it reflects and impacts the…

Intermediality, Media Practices and Media Literacy is one of the six research themes of the LUCAS Modern and Contemporary cluster.

Below you will find an overview of how researchers from the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs and their research appear in the media, and you can read more about topics that concern the Faculty.

It is often claimed that social media can contribute to democratic decision-making by bringing politicians and citizens into dialogue with one another. But is this potential always realised, and how? Most researchers look at politicians and their online communication strategies. In this New Media &…

Media & interaction is where artificial intelligence and machine learning meet philosophy, cognitive science, and the creative arts. Examples of research questions in this domain are: 'Can an algorithm be creative by human standards?', 'Can creative processes, such as composing music or writing poetry,…

Political scientist Rebekah Tromble (Leiden University) and computational sociolinguist Dirk Hovy (University of Copenhagen) analyse how much hostility and sexism Clinton faces on Twitter, as well as who seems to be behind such attacks.

What are the critical elements in sonic materialization of fixed media electroacoustic music and how can these parameters be classified? How would interpretation be defined in performing fixed media music? What are the creative and new ways of presenting fixed media music by incorporating all the presentation…

This interdisciplinary research master offers the best of three worlds (arts, literature and media) through a programme of well-designed courses, combining theoretical and historical training with free space for specialisation.

The MA Media Studies consists of four different programmes in the fields of Journalism and New Media (Dutch taught), Book and Digital Media Studies, Film and Photographic Studies and Cultural Analysis: Literature and Theory.

Media & interaction is where artificial intelligence and machine learning meet philosophy, cognitive science, and the creative arts. Examples of research questions in this domain are: 'Can an algorithm be creative by human standards?', 'Can creative processes, such as composing music or writing poetry,…

Based on interviews with feminist Instagram users, this article studies emergent feminist visibilities on Instagram through the concept of filtering.

The master’s programme Media Technology at Leiden University focuses on creative exploration as well as the understanding of science and technology.

Are you eager to bring your own questions and curiosity into scientific research? Do the creation of media and use of technology drive your research interests? Could you be a researcher who challenges scientific practice and pushes its boundaries?

Play and Media is one of the six research themes of the LUCAS Modern and Contemporary cluster.