My full name is “Joan Pla Vivoles”. “Joan” is a Catalan name, pronouced (/d͡ʒuˈan/), although different pronunciations are welcome. My first surname is “Pla”, and my second surname is “Vivoles”. In international contexts I prefer using “Joan Pla” to prevent confusion and ensure simplicity.
Born in 1980, I have a firsthand memory of the world before the Internet—not that I particularly miss it. This is simply a statement to position myself within a specific generation and era.
My academic and research interests include:
- Journalism and the Digital Public Sphere
- Political Economy + Digital Sovereignty
- Public Service Media in Europe
- Decentralised Social Networks
- FLOSS
- Philosophy of Technology
- AI Ethics and AI in research
Academic background
- 2023 Interaction design (Master’s degree) – Malmö University
- Master’s thesis: “Newspaperless. Material Explorations on Written News in a Post-Printing Era” (supervisor: David Cuartielles)
- 2013 Advanced Journalism. Reporting (Master’s degree) – Ramon Llull University (Barcelona)
- Master’s thesis: “From Pericles to Microblogging: An Analysis of the Main Twitter Accounts of Eight Western Newspapers: The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El País, La Repubblica, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Aftenposten, and Dagens Nyheter” (supervisor: Carlos Ruiz)
- 2009 Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature (Bachelor’s degree) – University of Barcelona
- Erasmus student at the University of Manchester, UK
- 2005 Photojournalism (Postgraduate dipploma) – Autonomous University of Barcelona
- 2003 Journalism (Bachelor’s degree) – Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona)
- 2001 Geography (Bachelor’s degree, 1st cycle) – University of Girona
This is all I wish to disclose publicly about myself. If you need anything else, you can contact me at pla@proton.me, @joanpla:matrix.org or see you around the Fediverse: @joanpla (since August 2018) or @joan (since January 2025).
I was on Twitter from February 2008 until sometime in 2023. I still have the account on X for professional reasons, but I set it to private and don’t use it anymore for obvious reasons.
This is a picture of me taken by Google’s Street View car in 2022:
And this is the picture I took to Google’s Street View car:
