Daniël Jurg

Daniël is a PhD candidate affiliated with imec-SMIT at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. With a background in Arts, Culture & Media, and Philosophy, he holds a Master’s (MRes) degree in Media Studies from the University of Amsterdam. Daniël is currently working on a PhD fellowship in fundamental research funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO).

As part of the unit News: Uses, Strategies & Engagements (NUSE), Daniël examines political engagement with reactionary media brands on YouTube within the context of the so-called online culture wars and YouTube radicalization. His research is situated within the broader history of countercultural conservative media in the United States, focusing particularly on the new role that participatory audiences play in the formation of contemporary online reactionary media brands and the engagement with, and dissemination of, their narratives. His work engages with various research fields, including alternative media, audience studies, digital culture, fandom, journalism, political communication, and YouTube studies.

Methodologically, Daniël primarily works with digital data, employing a variety of computational methods from the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to study engagement patterns in comment sections. Additionally, his recent work includes data donation methods, aiming to generate new insights into online engagement and to promote reflective and reflexive media usage through tools and visualizations.