We published a scholarly article in M/C Journal on the origins and dynamics of the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, in which a wildly speculative narrative was constructed about a secret child sex ring led by Democrat officials. This conspiracy, as is argued, was enabled by the affordances of 4chan, that stimulate a “butterfly effect” of bullshit. […]

Marc Tuters of OILab joined a conference panel organised by the Stimuleringsfonds voor de Journalistiek and IMMovator, together with journalist Joris Luyendijk and writer/Internet-sceptic Evgeny Morozov. Tuters touched upon the merging dynamics between Internet memes and post-truth politics, forming vehicles for political propaganda. In doing so, Tuters claims the meme-culture of these online right-wing movements […]

One of the main Dutch public broadcasters, VPRO, featured an article in their magazine with comments from Marc Tuters of OILab. It raises questions on 4chan’s current culture as a cultic milieu, and how to consider the humorous politics of Kekistan, a fake country dedicated to trolling campaigns targeting identity politics. “Wat is de voedingsbodem […]

OILab’s research on thematising memes was featured in an article by De Correspondent, an online platform for investigative journalism. In the Digital Methods Initiative’s 2018 winter school, Sal Hagen from OILab, together with a group of researchers, classified memes from 4chan/pol/ as related to specific themes. The research is written up on the DMI website. […]

Marc Tuters was interviewed for a piece on fluter.de – “Warum die Trump-Fans dem Präsidenten weiter treu bleiben.” It features a discussion on the dynamics of the content aggregator Reddit, and how it enables r/The_Donald as a hub for pro-Trump activity. Read the text here (German). Read the text in English (translated by Google Translate).

OILab’s original research on the birth of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, conducted during the Digital Methods Initiative‘s Winter School 2018, has been featured in an article by Dimitri Tokmetzis in De Correspondent. Read the article here. Read the original research report here.

In a second piece with Geert Lovink, Marc Tuters of OILab discusses the use of memes in conversation with Walter Benjamin’s theory of dialectical images. In doing so, it attempts to develop how memes can be understood as a continuation of Benjamin’s mention of ‘genuine images in language’, with the objective “to contemplate this seemingly […]

Marc Tuters of OILab was recently interviewed by the Dutch kids magazine 7Days, focusing on educational articles for teenagers. Tuters touched on the definition of memes, and their poitical usage. Read the article (in Dutch) below.

The tech-blog The Next Web republished our article on the (mis)uses of the Deus Vult meme. If you haven’t already – there’s two places to read it now: How the ‘Deus Vult’ gaming meme turned far-right on The Next Web ‘Deus Vult!’: Tracing the Many (Mis)uses of a Meme on OILab

Marc Tuters of OILab co-authored a piece with Geert Lovink on non.copyriot.com. In the light of  the discovery that memes can “express tensions that can’t be spoken in the political correct vocabulary of the mainstream media”, Tuters and Lovink provoke the reader to “consider memes in relation to the left’s enduring question of how to […]