Dr. Erik Borra is assistant professor in Journalism and New Media at the University of Amsterdam. He holds an MSc in artificial intelligence and information retrieval, and his PhD research focused on the use of web data and new digital research instruments in the humanities and social sciences. Erik participated in several international research projects concerning i.a. internet censorship (opennet.net) and the mapping of controversies in politics and science (mappingcontroversies.net, climaps.eu). Erik also collaborated with Barcelona Media, Yahoo Research, NRC Handelsblad, “Pauw en Witteman,” and “de Correspondent,” among others. Erik’s current research is focused on infrastructures for collecting and analyzing social media data, digital methods, controversy mapping, and the application of artificial intelligence in journalism.

Erik was the technical director of the Digital Methods Initiative, one of Europe’s leading schools for internet studies, between 2007 and 2020. In that capacity he developed dozens of tools to gather, analyze and visualize web data, such as the Twitter Capture and Analysis Toolset (DMI-TCAT), Contropedia, Political Search Trends, and the Lippmannian Device which includes many search engine scrapers.

Erik had long coordinated the master program in Journalism and Media. Erik teaches data journalism, artificial intelligence, as well as digital, quantitative, and generative methods in the journalism program. Erik has been teaching Digital Research Methods for the MA in New Media and Digital Culture for over a decade.