Rianne Riemens is a postdoctoral researcher studying Big Tech and processes of platformization in relation to the climate crisis. She is part of the focus area Governing the Digital Society and one of the core members of the special interest group Greening the Digital Society. The postdoc project is supported by the Spinoza-funded project led by Prof. dr. José van Dijck. Her current research focuses on 1) the relation between Big Tech, AI and energy,  2) platform expansion in times of climate crisis, 3) EU policy on the green and digital transition and 4) the cultural and political power of Silicon Valley actors. 

Before starting her postdoc, Rianne was a PhD researcher at Radboud University, within an ERC project on Platform Discourses. In her PhD project titled Platform Earth: Ecomodernism in Tech-on-Climate Discourse, she analyzed how the cultural network of Silicon Valley has (re)positioned itself in relation to the climate crisis. The research maps how US tech actors - companies such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and prominent tech figures such as Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk - legitimize the expansion of their businesses through a range of promotional materials and activities: their “tech-on-climate discourse”. Through a discursive and historical analysis, the project examines the narratives and aesthetics of Big Tech’s climate discourse, exit projects such as seasteading and spacefaring, as well as forms of tech-for-good philanthropy.

Rianne has a background in media and culture studies. After her graduation, she worked as a freelancer for cultural organizations SETUP and Waag Futurelab, and as a junior researcher at Utrecht University (Geosciences) in the project Algoritmisch Atelier, studying the safeguarding of public values on mobility platforms.