Wessel Joosten

Wessel Joosten (2003) is a third-year Digital Culture and Society student from Venlo, the Netherlands. His research interests lie in marginalized online cultures on social media platforms, philosophy, contemporary politics and its mediation through digital media, algorithms, and capitalism, as well as various artistic formats, including cinema and music. Since beginning his studies in 2022, eight of his articles, written for various course modules within his program, have been published on this platform.

His publications cover a broad range of topics, including news framing across political ideologies in the context of the Acid-Reuzegom case, the privacy implications of Spotify usage, the cultural phenomenon of Barbenheimer, cryptocurrency and its relation to hegemonic masculinity, AI-generated music, and Kendrick Lamar as a medium for social and political activism.

After completing a minor in Political Science at the University of Exeter in England, Wessel has resumed his bachelor’s studies in Tilburg. Given the strong likelihood of pursuing the master’s variant of his program, he looks forward to sharing new publications in the near future. If you're interested in exploring more of his ideas across various columns, you can visit his Medium page at https://medium.com/@wesseljoosten.

My research centers on marginalized (online) cultures, philosophy, (surveillance) capitalism, and political science in relation to digital media, music, and art. Through critical case studies—ranging from Spotify’s datafication of listening habits to SoundCloud’s disruption of music industry gatekeeping, from crypto culture’s hypermasculine posturing to meme-based gender politics—I examine how digital platforms shape identity, visibility, and power. I also investigate how AI technologies impact creativity and ethics, as seen in posthumous music releases and synthetic aesthetics. My work often highlights how cultural expressions—whether through protest music, viral media, or digital storytelling—serve as sites of both resistance and reproduction of dominant ideologies. Whether analyzing the racial dynamics of Zwarte Piet, the ecological commodification of "Mooder Maas," or the parasocial mystique of characters like Patrick Bateman, I aim to expose the sociopolitical currents running beneath digital and cultural phenomena.