How Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen is changing Dutch media from within

Zeikschrift (which roughly translates to “whiny writing”) is a Dutch media-critical Instagram account founded in 2016 by legal historian and media critic Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen. Van den Nieuwenhuizen came up with this idea after reading a column in which the author described their cleaning lady as “a semi-elderly specimen from Bulgaria with broken knees'' and who consequently got fired because she allegedly did not clean the floors properly.

The patronizing tone of the text enraged Van den Nieuwenhuizen and thus she took to the Internet, expecting to find an abundance of negative feedback regarding this condescending column.  find any. In order to have an accessible place where content like this could be denounced, Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen took it upon herself to create  Instagram (Wouters, 2019). Although the account started as a behavior that she disapproved of, Zeikschrift has now grown exceptionally. The Instagram account has now gained over 77.000 followers, many of whom are play big parts in the Dutch media (Looijestijn, 2019).

On the Zeikschrift Instagram account, Van den Nieuwenhuizen aims to “expose the nonsense in the Dutch media, from body-shaming to bad framing”. The creator mostly shares pictures and screenshots of articles from the Dutch media that she believes to be something wrong with. Most of the criticism she wields over the media has to do with the lack of diversity in it, making topics such as sexism, body-shaming, racism, and heteronormativity  discussions on her Instagram account.

In this article, I am going to answer the question “How does Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen make use of digital vigilantism in order to criticize the Dutch media with Zeikschrift?” I am going to analyse the content shared on Zeikschrift by looking at concepts such as digital vigilantism and new journalistic practices that developed through modern digital affordances. These concepts will help me analyse the way in which Van den Nieuwenhuizen is able to exercise influence over the Dutch media. 

Although Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen is active on multiple social media accounts and platforms, I am solely going to look at Zeikschrift on the Instagram platform since this is where most, if not all, of Van den Nieuwenhuizen’s digital vigilantism takes place. Moreover, an analysis of this platform is also a way to reflect the transformation of modern journalism.

Zeikschrift and its digital vigilantism

Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen’s Zeikschrift is a clear case of an online practice called digital vigilantism. Digital vigilantism refers to “an emerging practice whereby citizen’s use of ubiquitous and domesticated technologies enable a parallel form of criminal justice”. With that, the practice of digital vigilantism is characterized by “a sense of moral outrage” and “a general sense of offence taking” (Trottier, 2016). Via Zeikschrift, Van den Nieuwenhuizen aims to call out behaviors that she deems to be inappropriate and toxic, an example of which is shown in figure 1.

@shudu.gram

In the post on Zeikschrift, Van den Nieuwenhuizen shared a screenshot of a news article by public broadcast corporation NOS with regards to international Coming Out Day. The author of this NOS article stated that this day is meant to celebrate the acceptance of people with “another sexual or gender identity”. 

Van den Nieuwenhuizen criticized the journalist’s word choice and added the question “other than whom?”. According to the caption she wrote accompanying the post, the article by NOS is written from a heterosexual and cis-gendered viewpoint. With that, she stated that heterosexual people should think more about the role they play in maintaining the heterosexual and cis-gendered standard way of thinking in our society. Van den Nieuwenhuizen thus experienced a sense of moral outrage when reading the article by NOS and decided to turn to technology in order to call out the injustice caused by this text.

Moreover, digital vigilantism is characterized by the fact that digital media allow users not only to “organise online”, but also to “facilitate social harms” and to make use of “an expansive and ever-asserting informational infrastructure” (Trottier, 2016). Because of digital media, barriers to publishing are lowered, which allows citizens to discuss targeted individuals and issue calls for action.

Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen makes good use of the fact that regular citizens are able to organise online and facilitate social harms. The Zeikschrift founder motivates her followers to hold valuable and constructive discussions in the comments and she herself states that she is also open to any criticism from , an example of which is shown in figure 2 (Zijp, 2019).

In the post regarding Doutzen Kroes, Van den Nieuwenhuizen calls out the Dutch model for making “insinuations about governmental power abuse and manipulation” and, with that, sharing faultful information with her millions of followers. Van den Nieuwenhuizen adds at the end, however, that she would like her followers to “talk in the comments, especially if you actually think Doutzen has a good point”. By doing this, she invites her followers, and thus regular citizens, into her practice of digital vigilantism, but also encourages an open conversation in which the model does not necessarily get 'punished'. 

Via the comments of the posts by Zeikschrift, followers are able to further call out the toxic behavior and even call out Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen when they deem it to be necessary. Madeleijn thus utilizes the opportunity for regular users to share their criticism of Dutch media via social media so that her followers can have a say in the matter as well.

This citizen-aspect especially plays a big role in Zeikschrift as the Instagram account is, although political and critical, also very personal. On Instagram Stories, Van den Nieuwenhuizen shares aspects of her everyday life and her work in America. 

Instead of portraying herself as an all-knowing commander of the Dutch media, this personalization of her activist Instagram account makes her into a regular online citizen like you and me. Most likely because of this personal edge to Zeikschrift, discussions in the comment section of the account remain, generally speaking, relatively peaceful (Looijestijn, 2019).

Zeikschrift and its digital affordances

Before the advent of social media, journalists held the role of gatekeepers of the public sphere, as they

were the ones who got to decide which voices made it into the media and which ones did not. Because of this, they were the ones who got to organize public debates through the creation of public stories that got shared with the world. 

The advent of social media, however, undermined the journalist’s role as gatekeeper. Nowadays, everyone with an Internet connection can create a social media account and, with that, take on the role of a news provider. A process also known as disintermediation, it allows everybody from elite sources to ordinary citizens to communicate directly to the public (Carlson, 2016).

Because of digitalization and social media, journalists are no longer the only group that gets to decide how we view society through the media we consume. With Zeikschrift, Van den Nieuwenhuizen is now able to make critical comments regarding the media and the reality they represent, even though, when she started, she was merely someone with a journalism degree and the desire for a more just version of the Dutch media. Because of the process of intermediation, she was able to bring her voice into the public sphere and put her two cents in the organization of public debates.

Zeikschrift and its earnings

Traditionally speaking, journalists barely paid any attention to feedback from their audience. Due to new digital affordances, however, the interaction between audiences and messages has become increasingly important. Nowadays, journalists can directly experience how audiences respond to the content they put out through numbers of page views, viewing time, etc. Based on these numbers, journalists can decide to select/de-select stories or edit them accordingly in order to attract a bigger audience (Tandoc Jr, 2014). 

Since digital affordances now make it possible for journalists to select/de-select and edit articles after they have been published, these journalists are also able to remove any content that they might have received backlash for. Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen’s digital vigilantism with Zeikschrift encourages journalists to select/de-select or edit their articles after they have already been published. Her aim with this is mostly to make them remove toxic behavior that was present in the article when it was published, an example of which is shown in figures 4 and 5.

Zeikschrift’s post shown in figure 4 is with regard to online newspaper nu.nl’s report of actor Elliot Page coming out as transgender. The reason Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen called out nu.nl is that the online newspaper referred to the actor with the name he used before his transition, a practice also known as deadnaming. After receiving this critical feedback from many sources including Zeikschrift, nu.nl made use of the digital affordances that come with online newspapers and, as shown in figure 5, changed their article accordingly by no longer using the actor’s deadname. 

This is, however, not the only time journalists have responded to the criticism brought up by Zeikschrift. Other journalists have also listened to her feedback by editing an article or even taking it offline completely (Nab, 2019). The impact Van den Nieuwenhuizen has created with her Instagram account in these instances showcases that, although Zeikschrift is merely a disembodied, online phenomenon, it can still bring about physical and most likely moral change in the Dutch media.

Zeikschrift and its attack on individuals

There are, however, also some downsides to digital vigilantism. The attention that is put onto the targeted individual is often unwanted, intense and enduring. F

Think also of, for example, the sharing of personal details of the targeted individual or the spreading of misinformation that is often part of digital vigilantism. Digital vigilantism can even go so far as becoming similar to cyber-bullying (Trottier, 2016).

Although Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen encourages her followers to have respectful discussions of the Dutch media in the comments, even on Zeikschrift the practice of digital vigilantism can become unpleasant quite quickly. It often gets tough when followers  attacking each other because of their opinion on the matter. On one of the discussions regarding climate change, a follower commented that it was “really creepy” in the comment section because of the amount of passive aggression present, causing the to be “far too scared to do anything wrong and to be publicly slaughtered by hundreds of women”.

@shudu.gram

Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen does aim to dodge this negative connotation of digital vigilantism by asking her followers to not attack the individuals that she is discussing in her posts. In figure 7, Van den Nieuwenhuizen discussed a travel blogger who stated that she “is not ashamed that she travels by plane 25 times per year”. The creator criticized her stance towards travelling by plane while climate change is becoming a more and more problematic topic nowadays. 

At the end of her post, however, Van den Nieuwenhuizen stated that she discourages “the search and verbal harassment of this individual blogger” since she “does not specifically care about her in this instance”. Although Van den Nieuwenhuizen aims to criticize Dutch media through Zeikschrift, she is also aware of the negative consequences she can cause because of her digital vigilantism and her large following online. With that, she tries to minimize these negative consequences as much as possible.

Conclusion

Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen started Zeikschrift because she felt like there was yet to be a platform founded that sheds light on the darker side of the Dutch media. While the Instagram account started as a way to create a visual archive of unjust patterns in the media, it has now grown into a media-critical space for both Van den Nieuwenhuizen and her followers to strive for physical and moral change through the practice of digital vigilantism.

Van den Nieuwenhuizen’s digital vigilantism is not something that can be brushed off as a practice that solely occurs on Instagram. No, the legal historian and media critic has been able to make such an impact that, in several cases, journalists have responded to it by adapting an article or even taking it offline completely.  takes part in the transformation of journalism and media as we know it. No longer are these areas solely dominated by elite groups - anyone with a little luck can now take part in it. 

Although there are some negative connotations that come with digital vigilantism regarding the negative attention and virality of it all, Van den Nieuwenhuizen  make Zeikschrift into a relatively peaceful platform where people can come together to fight for an overall more just media representation in the Netherlands.

References

Carlson, M. (2016). Sources as News Producers. The SAGE Handbook of Digital Journalism, SAGE Publications.

Looijestijn, E. (2019). Genuanceerd gezeik. Retrieved from: https://www.vpro.nl/lees/artikelen/2019/zeikschrift.html 

Nab, L. (2019). Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen (aka @Zeikschrift) columnist voor Vogue. Retrieved from: https://www.villamedia.nl/artikel/madeleijn-van-den-nieuwenhuizen-aka-zeikschrift-columnist-voor-vogue 

Tandoc Jr, E. C. (2014). Journalism is twerking? How web analytics is changing the process of gatekeeping. Singapore: Nanyang Technological University. 

Trottier, D. (2016). Digital Vigilantism as Weaponisation of Visibility. 

Wouters, N. (2019). In gesprek met Vogue’s nieuwe columnist Madeleijn van den Nieuwenhuizen. Retrieved from: https://www.vogue.nl/magazine/a26097588/vogue-nieuwe-columnist-madeleijn-van-den-nieuwenhuizen/ 

Zijp, F. (2019). Instragram leent zich goed voor constructief activisme.

Retrieved from: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2019/01/25/instagram-leent-zich-goed-voor-constructief-activisme-a3651411