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Michael Dieter (Associate Professor)

Michael Dieter is an interdisciplinary researcher with a primary focus in digital media studies, media theory and political philosophy. His research investigates socio-technical forms of interface critique, drawing from design methods, software studies and media art. He is also engaged in app studies, particularly in developing digital methods to critically investigate the platform economy of apps, including key issues of media concentration, datafication and governance. Finally, his work branches into tactical media, technological aesthetics and media genealogies concerned with socio-political organization, labour and infrastructural power.

Research Profile

Media theory; interface critique; app studies; technological aesthetics; software studies; inventive methods; new media literacies.

Selected Publications

JOURNAL ARTICLES

• w/ Fernando van der Vlist, Anne Helmond & Esther Weltevrede, 'Super-appification: Conglomeration in the Global Digital Economy', New Media & Society (2024);
• 'Interface Critique at Large', Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (2022), Spanish translation: 'La crítica de interfaces en un campo ampliado', TecnoPsique, 2026;
• w/ Anne Helmond, Nathaniel Tkacz, Fernando van der Vlist and Esther Weltevrede, 'Pandemic Platform Governance: Mapping the Global Ecosystem of COVID-19 Response Apps', Internet Policy Review 10.03 (2021),
• w/ Nathaniel Tkacz, ‘The Patterning of Finance/Security: A Designerly Walkthrough of Challenger Banking Apps’, Computational Culture: A Journal of Software Studies 7 (2020),
• w/ David Gauthier and Marc Tuters, ‘Conversation Pieces: On Recounting New Media Art Mailinglist Cultures’, Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture and Society, Special Issue: Internet Histories and Computational Methods 3.3-4 (2019): 245-274.
• w/ Carolin Gerlitz, Anne Helmond, Nathaniel Tkacz, Fernando van der Vlist and Esther Weltevrede, ‘Multi-Situated App Studies: Methods and Propositions.’ Social Media + Society (2019).
• w/ David Gauthier, ‘On the Politics of Chrono-Design: Capture, Time and the Interface,’ Theory, Culture & Society 2 (2019): 61-87.
• ‘The Virtues of Critical Technical Practice’, differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, special Issue: Darkside of the Digital Humanities, 25.1 (2014): 216-230.
• ‘The Becoming Environmental of Power: Tactical Media After Control’, Fibreculture Journal 18 (2011),
• ‘Issues, Processes, AIR: Toward Reticular Politics’, Australian Humanities Review 46 (2009),
• ‘Amazon Noir: Piracy, Distribution, Control’, M/C Journal 5 (2007),

EDITED COLLECTIONS

• w/ David Berry, Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation and Design, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, 2015.

BOOK CHAPTERS

• ‘The Optimization Complex’, in Eric Kluitenburg and David Garcia (eds) Tactical Media Anthology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press [forthcoming]
• ‘Tactical Media,’ in Mercedes Bunz and Michael Dieter (eds) Keywords for the Digital Humanities, Lüneburg: Meson Press [forthcoming]
• ‘Dark Patterns: Interface Design, Augmentation and Crisis’, in David Berry and Michael Dieter (eds) Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation and Design, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, pp. 163-178.
• ‘Locative Esthetics and the Actor-Network’, in Rowan Wilkin and Gerald Goggin (eds) Locative Media: Culture, Economy, Policy, New York: Routledge, 2014, pp. 224-236.
• w/ Geert Lovink, 'Theses on Making in the Digital Age', in Garnet Hertz (ed.) Critical Making (2012),
• ‘Contingent Operations: Reticular Aesthetics, Transduction, and the EKMRZ Trilogy’, in Mark Nunes (ed.) Error: Glitch, Noise and Jam in New Media Cultures, Continuum: New York and London, 2010, pp. 187-209.

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

• ‘Responsiveness and the Flexible Grid’, in Teresa Martínez Figuerola and Jorge Luis Marzo (eds) Interface Politics, Barcelona: GREDITS Publications, 2016, pp. 91-104.
• ‘Notes on Hardware Archaeology and 8-Bit Video Game Modification,’ Civics, Communication, Industry - ANZCA2007 Conference Proceedings (2007),

INTERVIEWS (CONDUCTED)

• ‘New Materialism and Non-Humanisation: Interview with Jussi Parikka’, in Michelle Kasprzak (ed.) Speculative Realities: Blowup Reader 6, Rotterdam: V2_ Publishing 2013, pp. 23-36; Spanish: 'Novo materialismo e não humanização', Revista ECO-Pós 21.2 (2018): 364-380.
• ‘Interview with Matthew Kirschenbaum’, Neural 31 (2008): 7-10.
• w/ Nicole Heber, ‘Paper and Pixels in Love: An Email Interview with Alessandro Ludovico’, antiTHESIS 18 (2008): 82-90;
• w/ Amelia Johns and Beornn McCarthy, ‘A Forgetting That Fails to Forget Itself: Interview with Peter Krapp’, antiTHESIS 17 (2007): 115-125.

OTHER WRITING

• 'Dapps vs. Apps', MoneyLab Blog, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2022,
• Michael Dieter, Carolin Gerlitz, Anne Helmond, Nathaniel Tkacz, Fernando van der Vlist and Esther Weltevrede, ‘Store, Interface, Package, Connection: Methods and Propositions for Multi-situated App Studies,’ Medien der Kooperation-Working Paper Series, Siegen: University of Siegen/Collaborative Research Center, Media of Cooperation, 2018.
• ‘All Things Optimal’ in S. Lorusso (ed.) Pervasive Labour Union: The Entreprecariat, 2017, pp. 71-73;
• w/ David M. Berry, Baruch Gottlieb and Lioudmila Voropai, Imaginary Museums, Computationality and The New Aesthetic, Berlin: Transmediale, 2013,
• w/ David M. Berry, ‘Book Sprinting (or Everything You Wanted To Know About Book Sprinting But Were Afraid To Ask)’, Booktype: The Future of the Book – A Sourcefabric Magazine (2012).
• w/ David M. Berry, Michel van Dartel, Michelle Kasprzak, Nat Muller, Rachel O'Reilly and José Luis de Vicente, New Aesthetic, New Anxieties, Rotterdam: V2_ Publishing 2012,
• w/ Thomas Apperley, ‘Counterplay Editorial’, Fibreculture 16 (2010),
• ‘cyclone.soc’, catalogue text for Atmos: Weather as Media, curated by Janine Randerson, Mic Toi Rerehiko, Media and Interdisciplinary Arts Centre, Auckland, 2008.
• ‘Open Cartographies: On Assembling Things Through Locative Media’, New Network Theory: Collected Abstracts and Papers, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2007.

Modules Taught

• IM902 - Approaches to the Digital
• IM904 - Digital Methods
• IM923 - User Interface Cultures: Design, Method, and Critique

Administration

Co-Director of Graduate Studies

Convenor MA in Digital Media and Culture

Contact

Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies
Room B0.27
University of º£½ÇÉçÇø
Coventry
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