The Corona virus crisis from a first year bachelor students perspective felt only right to have after our conversation with Nataliia a masters student. In this episode I spoke to Melanie Ballin a first year Online Culture student and we discussed what life is like for first year students like herself and the social hurdles one must jump through to enjoy online university life. 

This episode also shed a light on the importance of mental welfare for students and we felt it was important to add some resources to guide online culture students in need of the student psychologist. The link to an online application is below. 

https://forms.tilburguniversity.edu/646?_ga=2.238764610.394304619.1611724426-1031171963.1608144995&_gac=1.248696309.1611227716.CjwKCAiA6aSABhApEiwA6Cbm_yoby3qAYAxTG42qsPB-_Z-B1KByX0YMsRKCL72ia5YCxplukXztRBoC79YQAvD_BwE 

After recording an fascinating episode on Nataliia's paper on Chernobyl, we continued to talk about how the corona crisis has affected our university lives. This is the first of many Ludic-Cast episodes to come, there is no clear format except for two students having an unfiltered casual conversation. Hope you enjoy! 

In this episode NataliIa Vdovychenko's article on Chernobyl as a medium of global art is discussed. We explore what makes people want to visit the remains of the ghost city of Pripyat and how culture affects tourism. 

 https://www.diggitmagazine.com/articles/chernobyl-medium-global-art

On this episode of Digging Deeper I met with Chi-Chieh Huang the author of Master of None and Modern Romances on Television for a chat. We discuss intermediality, narrative complexity and the famous Netflix romantic comedy 'Master of None'  and the techniques it uses to set itself apart from others.

Everybody has texted their friends or lovers ‘heyyy’ one time or another, but how much does it matter to add extra (grammatically unnecessary) letters when texting? In this article, we dive into this literacy phenomenon in relation to online dating. Elongated words seem to carry a first order indexicality in the online dating world, with open interpretation and confusion about the message on the receiver’s end as a result. By analyzing real-life examples of user’s attitudes, and by taking into account some online opinions about the phenomenon, we discuss the use and meaning of “heyyy”. Furthermore, we demonstrate that literacy (and the way we type a given world) has impacts all sorts of things, including online dating.

https://www.diggitmagazine.com/papers/does-length-matter

QAnon is a pro-Trump conspiracy group born out of the recesses of imageboard website 4chan. It has a thriving online following and its main mission is to expose prominent left-wing political figures for being members of a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles (Wong, 2020). This podcast delves into how prominent QAnon members utilize social media algorithms to mobilize followers.

https://www.diggitmagazine.com/articles/qanon-alt-right-war-machine

MUSIC BY: FINGERSPIT 

HER DISCOGRAPHY

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0bKtV7eOLdtkULTDUeqjny?si=L4PjiixXRgK7gSwADo9Xqg

The Instagram page Tilburg University Confessions is discussed and heavily critiqued by Daniel and Philip.

Daniel and Philip discuss the hit Netflix reality tv show Love is Blind.

A few months back I teamed up with Philip van Vuuren, a friend and colleague of mine in the second year of the Online Culture Media Art and Society course. We decided to record a podcast with the idea of uncertainty being the key focus. In this debut episode we discussed our specialization choices in the second year, our previous studies and what lead us to Online Culture and finally uncertainties pertaining to the future and job markets.