Fernando van der Vlist (PhD Utrecht University) is a postdoctoral researcher of media and digital society at Utrecht University and also, since 2016, with the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Media of Cooperation’ at the University of Siegen (funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG). He is part of Utrecht University’s focus area ‘Governing the Digital Society’ and teaches at the Media and Culture Studies department. Additionally, he is part of international research collectives including the App Studies Initiative (as co-lead), the Digital Methods Initiative, and the Public Data Lab. His research has been published open access in some of the field’s leading scholarly (peer-reviewed) journals, including Big Data & Society, Social Media + Society, and Internet Policy Review. His PhD thesis The Platform as Ecosystem (2022) was jointly supervised by Prof. José van Dijck (Utrecht University) and Prof. Carolin Gerlitz (University of Siegen). Since 2014, Fernando has held different academic (research and teaching) positions at Utrecht University, the University of Amsterdam (both NL), and at the University of Siegen (DE).

(More info: fernandovandervlist.nl and @fvandervlist.)

Fernando defended his PhD thesis The Platform as Ecosystem at Utrecht University on 16 September 2022. His dissertation contributes cutting-edge empirical and historical perspectives on digital ‘platforms’ and the configurations and dynamics of their governance and power. It explains the need to ‘map’ and study platforms’ larger ‘ecosystems’, especially their considerable business and app ecosystems. All of the chapters have been published open access as research articles in scholarly (peer-reviewed) journals. The research was jointly supervised by Prof. Dr. José van Dijck (Utrecht University) and Prof. Dr. Carolin Gerlitz (University of Siegen).

Fernando is part of subproject A03 on ‘Navigation in online/offline spaces’, which examines how sensor-based and increasingly autonomous navigation reconfigures current ideas about mapping, spatiality, autonomy, and movement. As part of this subproject, his research focus is on the specificity of digital sensor media, their infrastructures, and data operations and practices.

From 2020–2022, Fernando also was a researcher with the Integrated Research Training Group (MGK) of the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Media of Cooperation’.

• van der Vlist, F. N. (2022). The platform as ecosystem: Configurations and dynamics of governance and power. [Doctoral thesis]. Utrecht University. https://doi.org/10.33540/1284
• Hind, S., Kanderske, M., & van der Vlist, F. N. (2022). Making the Car ‘Platform Ready’: How Big Tech Is Driving the Platformization of Automobility. Social Media + Society, 8(2), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051221098697
• van der Vlist, F. N., Helmond, A., Burkhardt, M., & Seitz, T. (2022). API Governance: The Case of Facebook's Evolution. Social Media + Society, 8(2), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051221086228
• van der Vlist, F., & Helmond, A. (2021). Social media in the audience economy: Business-to-business partnerships and co-dependence. AoIR - Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2021. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12256
• Helmond, A., van der Vlist, F., Burkhardt, M., & Seitz, T. (2021). The governance of Facebook Platform. AoIR - Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2021. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12181
• Dieter, M., Tkacz, N., van der Vlist, F., Weltevrede, E., & Helmond, A. (2021). Pandemic platform governance: Mapping the global ecosystem of COVID-19 response apps. Internet Policy Review, 10(3), 1-28. https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.3.1568
• van der Vlist, F., Helmond, A., Burkhardt, M., & Seitz, T. (2021). The Technicity of Platform Governance: Structure and Evolution of Facebook’s APIs. (pp. 1–25). (CRC Media of Cooperation Working Paper Series; Vol. 20). Collaborative Research Centre 1187 Media of Cooperation. https://doi.org/10.25819/ubsi/9951
• van der Vlist, F., & Helmond, A. (2021). How partners mediate platform power: Mapping business and data partnerships in the social media ecosystem. Big Data & Society, 8(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517211025061
• Helmond, A., & van der Vlist, F. N. (2021). Platform and App Histories: Assessing Source Availability in Web Archives and App Repositories. In D. Gomes, E. Demidova, J. Winters, & T. Risse (Eds.), The Past Web: Exploring Web Archives (pp. 203–214). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63291-5_16
• Burkhardt, M., Helmond, A., Seitz, T., & van der Vlist, F. N. (2020). The Evolution of Facebook's Graph API. In AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research (pp. 1–4). Journals@UIC . https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2020i0.11185
• Gerlitz, C., Helmond, A., Nieborg, D., & van der Vlist, F. N. (guest eds.) (2019). Apps and Infrastructures. Computational Culture: A Journal of Software Studies, (7). http://computationalculture.net/issue-seven/
• Helmond, A., & van der Vlist, F. N. (2019). Social Media and Platform Historiography: Challenges and Opportunities. TMG – Journal for Media History, 22(1), 6–34. https://doi.org/10.18146/tmg.434
• Gerlitz, C., Helmond, A., van der Vlist, F. N., & Weltevrede, E. (2019). Regramming the Platform: Infrastructural Relations between Apps and Social Media. Computational Culture: A Journal of Software Studies, 7. http://computationalculture.net/regramming-the-platform/
• Gerlitz, C., Nieborg, D. B., van der Vlist, F. N., & Helmond, A. (guest eds.) (2019). Apps and Infrastructures: A Research Agenda. Computational Culture: A Journal of Software Studies, (7). http://computationalculture.net/apps-and-infrastructures-a-research-agenda/
• Helmond, A., Nieborg, D. B., & van der Vlist, F. N. (2019). Facebook's evolution: Development of a platform-as-infrastructure. Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture and Society, 3(2), 123–146. https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2019.1593667
• Dieter, M. J., Gerlitz, C., Helmond, A., Tkacz, N., van der Vlist, F. N., & Weltevrede, E. J. T. (2019). Multi-Situated App Studies: Methods and Propositions. Social Media + Society, 5(2), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119846486
• Dieter, M. J., Gerlitz, C., Helmond, A., Tkacz, N., van der Vlist, F. N., & Weltevrede, E. J. T. (2018). Store, interface, package, connection: Methods and propositions for multi-situated app studies. (pp. 1–16). (CRC Media of Cooperation Working Paper Series; No. 4). https://doi.org/10.25819/ubsi/7893
• Helmond, A., Nieborg, D. B., & van der Vlist, F. N. (2017). The Political Economy of Social Data: A Historical Analysis of Platform-Industry Partnerships. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Social Media & Society: Social Media for Good or Evil (pp. 1–5). [38] (ACM International Conference Proceedings Series). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3097286.3097324
• van der Vlist, F. N., & Helmond, A. (2017). Speculative data selfies. Internet Policy Review. https://policyreview.info/articles/news/speculative-data-selfies/449
• van der Vlist, F. N. (2017). Counter-Mapping Surveillance: A Critical Cartography of Mass Surveillance Technology After Snowden. Surveillance & Society, 15(1), 137–157. https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v15i1.5307
• Gerlitz, C., Helmond, A., van der Vlist, F. N., & Weltevrede, E. J. T. (2016). App Studies: Platform Rules and Methodological Challenges. 1–17. Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers, Berlin, Berlin, Germany. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v6i0.8431
• Gerlitz, C., Helmond, A., van der Vlist, F. N., & Weltevrede, E. J. T. (2016). App support ecologies: An empirical investigation of app–platform relations. Poster session presented at First Annual Conference of the Collaborative Research Centre 1187 “Media of Cooperation”, Siegen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. http://bit.ly/app-support-ecologies
• van der Vlist, F. N. (2016). Accounting for the social: Investigating Commensuration and Big Data practices at Facebook. Big Data & Society, 3(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716631365