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Sebastian Vehlken: Reality Mining
Reality Mining
(p. 173 – 192)

Sebastian Vehlken

Reality Mining
On New (and Former) Methods of Social Simulation

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  • social networks
  • social movements

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English

Sebastian Vehlken

Sebastian Vehlken

studied Media Studies and Economics at Ruhr-University Bochum and at Edith Cowan University, Perth. From 2005-2007, he was a DFG scholarship holder in the Graduate School »Media of History – History of Media« at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, and from 2007-2010 research assistant (PreDoc) in Media Philosophy, University of Vienna. From 2010-2013 he was a research assistant (PostDoc) at Leuphana University Lüneburg.  Since 2013, he is Junior Director of the Institute for Advanced Study on Media Cultures of Computer Simulation, Lüneburg.

Other texts by Sebastian Vehlken for DIAPHANES
Inge Baxmann (ed.), Timon Beyes (ed.), ...: Social Media—New Masses

Mass gatherings and the positive or negative phantasms of the masses instigate various discourses and practices of social control, communication, and community formation. Yet the masses are not what they once were. In light of the algorithmic analysis of mass data, the diagnosis of dispersed public spheres in the age of digital media, and new conceptions of the masses such as swarms, flash mobs, and multitudes, the emergence, functions, and effects of today’s digital masses need to be examined and discussed anew. They provide us, moreover, with an opportunity to reevaluate the cultural and medial historiography of the masses. The present volume outlines the contours of this new field of research and brings together a collection of studies that analyze the differences between the new and former masses, their distinct media-technical conditions, and the political consequences of current mass phenomena.

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