29 June - 3 July 2026 

 

In-person 

Opening Time:
29 June at 9.15am Amsterdam time. Please be punctual!

Opening Day Location:
To be announced

Everyday location:
Digital Methods Initiative
University of Amsterdam
Turfdraagsterpad 9
1012 XT Amsterdam

 

Digital Methods Initiative - Summer School 2026
 

The Digital Methods Initiative (DMI), Amsterdam, is holding its annual Summer School on 'Visual AI for internet research? On and beyond slop'. The format is that of a (social media and web) data sprint, with tutorials as well as hands-on work for telling stories with data. There is also a programme of keynote speakers. It is intended for advanced Master's students, PhD candidates and motivated scholars who would like to work on (and complete) a digital methods project in an intensive workshop setting. For a preview of what the event is like, you can view short video clips from previous editions of the School.

This year’s Summer School builds on the theme of using chatbots for internet research, particularly visual AI. Slop currently dominates the discussion of visual AI, especially given its routine use at the top of the US government, be it to denigrate street protestors demonstrating against policing policies or to depict the chief executive in a variety of costumes from the papal to the kingly. It’s also associated with other vocabulary attached to the effects of the deployment of generative AI in image and video: from brain rot to rage and engagement bait, including its accompanying creative and dark participatory cultures.

To date the exploration of chatbots for internet research has been related to text rather than still and moving images. It has included how-to’s and research-with-AI critique concerning prompting, annotation, classification, bias, guardrail sensitivity as well as ‘reference anxiety’, or how chatbots remix sources to create new lineages of ideas and concepts. But how to consider the work visual AI can do for research across the social sciences and the humanities?

One approach — studying its biases as well as using it as a prism for societal ones more generally — has been undertaken through creative prompting and reverse prompting. How to determine its offensiveness, sensitivities as well as hierarchies of concern? Apart from just prompting it, visual AI proclivities may also be teased out through inserting their output into content moderation APIs as well as other trained AI. But can visual AI be otherwise repurposed? The annual Digital Methods Summer School takes up this question for visual AI both for the frontier models as well as others in cross-cultural perspective.

Information

For all details about this Summer School Course, please visit the Digital Methods website below. 

Instructions, project descriptions and welcome package (as they become available)

 

Course information:

• Dates: 29 June - 3 July 2026
• Tuition fee: € 795
• Registration deadline: rolling admissions until 22 May 2026 
• Academic director: Richard Rogers
• Organizers: Varvara Boboc
• Academic level: all graduate levels - Master's, PhD candidates and professionals/scholars
• Credits: 6 ECTS 
• Field of study: New Media and Digital Culture
• Location: In-person. University of Amsterdam, Media Studies, Turfdraagsterpad 9, 1012 XT Amsterdam, the Netherlands

School philosophy

The Digital Methods Winter School is exploratory and experimental. It is not a setting for ‘just’ tool training or for principally tool-driven research. Substantive research projects are conceived and carried out. Participants are encouraged to ‘span time with their issue’ and the materials. In other words, we heed Alexander Galloway’s admonition about data and tool-driven work: “Those who were formerly scholars or experts in a certain area are now recast as mere tool users beholden to the affordances of the tool — while students spend ever more time mastering menus and buttons, becoming literate in a digital device rather than a literary corpus.”[1] We encourage device and corpus literacy! The device training we ask you to do prior to the School through online tutorials, and at the School itself, in a kind of flipped learning environment (if you'll excuse the overused phrase), we would like to believe that you have familiarised yourself already with the tools (and are driven, to complete the thought). During the School we will discuss and tinker with the nitty-gritty, aim to invent new methods, techniques and heuristics and create the first iterations of compelling work to be shared.

[1] Alexander Galloway (2014). The Cybernetic Hypothesis, Differences. 25(1):107-131. See page 127.

About the Summer School

The Digital Methods Summer School, a part of the Digital Methods Initiative, is directed by Professor Richard Rogers, Chair in New Media & Digital Culture, Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. The Summer School is one training opportunity provided by the Digital Methods Initiative (DMI). DMI also has a Winter School, held in early January. Both Schools have a technical staff as well as a design staff, drawn from the ranks of Density Design in Milan. The Schools also rely on a technical infrastructure of servers hosting tools and storing data. 

In a culture of experimentation and skill-sharing, participants bring their laptops, learn method, undertake research projects, make reports, tools and graphics and write them up on the Digital Methods wiki. The School concludes with final presentations. Often there are subject matter experts from non-governmental or other organizations who present their analytical needs and issues at the outset and the projects seek to meet those needs, however indirectly.

Please see previous Digital Methods Summer Schools, 2007-2025. See also previous Digital Methods Winter Schools, 2009-2026.

The Digital Methods Initiative was founded with a grant from the Piet Mondriaan Foundation, the public cultural funding organization. The Digital Methods Summer and Winter Schools are self-sustaining.

Credits and completion certificate

Completion certificate and transcript for 6 ECTS are granted to participants who follow the School program, and complete a significant contribution to a School project as evidenced by co-authorship of the project report as well as final (joint) presentation slides. Templates for the project report as well as for the presentation slides are supplied. Please note that certificates of completion and the transcripts are the same. There are no other certificates or proof of participation supplied.