“I’m addicted to you, don’t you know that you’re Toxic?”
On the 5th of October 2021, Britney Spears posted a video much like the ones of the past two years — standing in front of the camera, looking up and dancing.
Data Visualization and the Aestheticization of Activism on Instagram
In Kennedy and Hill’s article “The Pleasure and Pain of Visualizing Data in Times of Data Power” the way data is communicated through visualization is explored along with the ideological work that is involved, the ways in which data...
The Health Code System: or the Reinforcement of New Digital Mass Surveillance Practices
The rapid acceleration in the adoption of new technologies during infectious disease surveillance is not new, nor is it only applicable to the contexts of Covid-19. However, the outbreak of the coronavirus has brought a reality that demanded a...
Call for Applications – MA in New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam
One-year and two-year international Master’s programs in New Media available: MA Media Studies: New Media and Digital Culture (one year, full time) Research MA Media Studies: New Media and Digital Culture (two years, full time) MA New Media and...
MOM Over Time: A meta-analysis
Introduction MOM, a weblog belonging to the students and professors of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam, has been online for about fifteen years now. Master of Media blog (MOM), is about new media phenomena and digital culture...
The digital “gig economy”: empowering or constricting freelancers?
In the last decade sharing economy led to the blossoming of digital platforms that facilitate connections between clients and service providers. New companies managed to enter established industries and they didn’t do it quietly. Their approach is redefining actors,...
Surfing on the free trial wave – New app cancels free trials by the end of subscription period.
A new feature within the DoNotPay app launched this September and promises to cancel free trials before they run out and cost customers a lot of money. In a world in which streaming- and subscription services have become part...
Neurchi d’algorithmes
In 2017 Mark Zuckerberg decided that he wanted to help Nigerian women and reinvigorate Facebook’s business model. Somehow it triggered a renaissance in French memes.
Are you watching Netflix (or is it watching you)?
Bandersnatch (2018), is the first release of an interactive film for adults on a platform (Netflix) where the viewers make decisions for the main character, taking control of the storyline. The question is: do we really monitor the characters’...
Cross media learning: from a book to an online tribe – Miracle Morning
How the book “Miracle Morning” can be the driver of a social movement on the web 2.0? Prosumers are combining traditional and new medias to foster innovative ways of learning. Welcome to our online tribe!
Instagram Authority on Covid-19: Using Data, Algorithms and Interface Changes to Tackle Covid-19 Discourse
How exactly did Instagram roll-out a major change in interface which links people to information about Covid-19? What do we need to consider when a major platform takes such a position? Who has access to the data and algorithms...
“Connecting the next generation.”?: Engaging young adults in political debates
Social media is a great way to reach a certain audience. To magnify the political spectrum, every political party has a social media page to share their opinions on different issues, update and connect to their audience, and reach...
Kids see Kidfluencers; a qualitative study on the negative effects of child influencers on YouTube
Members: Josine Haas, Liza Osakue, Morris Nieuwenhuis, Thomas de Boer AbstractIn recent times, there has been a steady increase of a specific type of content creator on multiple social media platforms; the Kidfluencer. Most notably, these child influencers have...
Building a Feminist Dataset: Confronting algorithmic bias through the practice of thoughtful data collection
By Yan Cong, Kristen Zheng Project idea It is no news that algorithms can be sexist when autocompleting a sentence, performing facial recognition or displaying search results (Sheng et al. 2018; Buolamwini and Gebru 2018; Noble 2018). To confront...
New Media Art(ifically) Intelligent and Algorithmic? An Exploration into the Potential of the ‘New’ in AI and Algorithms as Producing Artworks
A submission by Goran Kusić, Jeanelle Grech and Marthe van de Graaff Who doesn’t love an introduction? The notion that machines can mimic features of human cognition has intrigued the new media art world in recent years. During the...
“hello literally everyone”: A Case Study on Social Response to Facebook’s Infrastructure Disruption
A submission by Shiyi (Annie) Zhou, Zarah Noorani, Niels Willemsen and Ayoub Samadi Facebook, now a common name in communication all over the world, faced a complete shutdown of services on October 4, 2021. This outage reflected on the...
Real Money on Virtual Items: A Visual Analysis of Fortnite Skins
Long gone are the days when video game players were a marginal bunch of nerds. Thanks to the proliferation of high speed internet connections to many households, online multiplayer gaming has taken off massively, which has led to a...
Analysing the Twitch Data Leak: possibilities, limitations and requirements
Introduction With the arrival of video game live streaming platforms, gaming has become a spectator form of entertainment. Live streaming lets players build an audience, brand, and income while streaming their game practices – often straight from their bedroom,...
How Online Slacktivism and White Saviorism Undermine Social Movements: KONY 2012 and Black Lives Matter
Amina Mohamed- aminanasree@gmail.com Geneviève Lemaire – lemaire.gen@gmail.com Miazia Schüler – miazia.schueler@student.uva.nl New Media Research Practices – WG4- 5 October 29, 2021 How Online Slacktivism and White Saviorism Undermine Social Movements: KONY 2012 and Black Lives Matter In the age...
The Red Pill Problem: Conducting a visual network graph analysis using Gephi on Red Pill and Blue Pill Search Queries on YouTube.
Alexander Teggin, Emilie Schwantzer, Son Nguyen. Keywords: Network Graph Analysis, Gephi, YouTube, Red Pill, Social Network Abstract During the last few years, the Red Pill movement has established strongholds on Youtube through a network of diverse channels promoting content...
YourTube: A Project to Detect the Bias Within the YouTube Algorithm
The YouTube recommender algorithm may be influencing your life more than you know. We might have a solution for that. A project by: Dilara Akdemir, Betsy Brossman, Gaurika Chaturvedi, and Noyan Er Introduction On YouTube, amateurs and professionals are...
Copyright Infringements: Exploring Fair Use Policies on YouTube
Abstract Copyright infringement and fair use are critical issues for YouTube creators, especially ones who primarily work with content they do not own. This research investigates how copyright is understood and navigated by YouTube creators from the genre of...
“Do fans also like…”? — in what ways do big artists profit from Spotify’s recommendation system
WG1 – 7 In recent years streaming services have exponentially grown in their popularity. Streaming services like Netflix and Spotify have amassed large numbers of users, making them some of the most well-known platforms to date. Especially for music,...
Shaping Data Cities: the consequences of governmental institutions outsourcing urban planning processes to privatized data companies
Cityswipe – a public participation platform in urban planning More than half of the world’s population lives in cities, thus the debates that revolve around this topic are of primary importance for a sustainable future. The concept for smart...
Out for A Battle on Instagram: How Chinese trolls Prompt Nationalism with Memes
The enriched interfaces and affordances of digital media platforms have enabled people’s online practice and expression to become more creative than ever before. Much like what Schneider (2021) points out, nationalist messages now also tend to be “communicated visually”,...
‘The platformization of the music industry, influenced by TikTok’
Social media has been critical in providing information. The media object under review is TikTok, which seems to have all focus shifted to its platform. Launched in 2018, TikTok joined the ranks of social media giants in record time,...
DECENTRALISED ECONOMY: WHEN NFTs MERGE INTO INSTAGRAM
With the creation of Web 2.0 and its opportunities for user-generated content as well as participatory culture, many social and cultural changes have been implemented. Platformization has changed the dynamics of digital infrastructures and economic processes for good and...
The Paradox of Digital Infrastructures: Polarization vs Unification on Unjected
This research paper considered the app Unjected from the perspective of both margins as methods and infrastructure studies. It showcases how the affordances of the app allow for the strengthening of the unvaccinated community while at the same...
Touched Through a Screen: Digital Intimacy on Twitter and OnlyFans
By Wen Hsiao, Rachel Steele, and Louis Weber Keywords: Affordances, Algorithm, Digital Intimacy, Digital Sex Work, and Platformization 1. Introduction On the internet, everyone and everything is just a click away. In the times of coronavirus, there is more...
True Crime TikTok: Affording Criminal Investigation and Media Visibility in the Gabby Petito Case
By: Gabrielle Aguilar, Sofia Ompolasvili, Luisa Garcia Amaya, and Sophie Kerstens On July 2, 2021, micro-influencer Gabby Petito set out on a cross-country road trip across the United States with her fiancé Brian Laundrie. Along the way, Petito hoped...
Moving Money: A Comparative Infrastructural Analysis and the Impact of Trust
Abtract By making infrastructure visible, we are able to see clearly how it shapes our environment and our experiences of it. This paper examines how policies and regulations, just as much as the technical backbone of payment applications, act...
Bumble Without Gender: A Speculative Approach to Dating Apps Without Data Bias
By Chloë Arkenbout, Joseph O’Malley, Abraham Oyewo and Olta Parai Bumble brands itself as feminist and revolutionary. However, its feminism is not intersectional. Apart from the fact that they present women making the first move as revolutionary while it...
Fansub apocalypse: How copyright protection laws deprive Chinese fans from accessing non-Chinese content
Chan Ji, Adam Kouki, Linxin Liu Keywords: #Fansub#人人影视#Chinacensorship#Streaming In February 2021, the Chinese government cracked down on Renren—a platform that provides more than 8 million users with community produced subtitled versions of foreign films and TV-shows (hereafter: fansubs). The...