New Media M.A. Research Blog | Media Studies, University of Amsterdam | 2009

Are We Addicted to Social Networking Sites?

Social Networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and Hyves have exploded in the past five years and have caused a societal shift in the way we communicate and connect with others. In 2009, time spent on social networking...

By Sarah Moore on 09/27/09 1

Is open always better than closed?

I went to an exhibition in the Tropenmuseum called Dono’s code, by the contemporary artist Heri Dono (1960). The first of his many politically charged works was Fermentation of Mind. I sneakily took a picture of it because it was quite impressive....

By Rakesh Kanhai on 09/27/09 2

What Social Network?

Perhaps I'm jaded. Perhaps I'm a nostalgist. Perhaps Facebook isn't the most sinister CIA operation yet. But somehow, I cannot stop from thinking that the "Web 2.0" as we know it today is an accident of history, an effect...

By John Haltiwanger on 09/27/09 6

Chinese Cyber World: A World in Itself

Let’s start with an interesting conversation between a Chinese (C) and a westerner (W): W: Oh, it is so nice to meet you! Do you have facebook? C: no. I am sorry. W: Do you have MSN? C: yea,...

By Siying Yang on 09/26/09 2

Photos from the first New Media MA Graduation Day

Tuesday the 22nd of September was a big day for both graduating New Media MA students and New Media studies itself. The first official graduation ceremony (which were previously held together with Film and Television studies in Mediastudies) marked...

By Anne Helmond on 09/26/09 2

Pecking in the Picnic

Yesterday was the last day of the PICNIC event, and even though the "main course" was only acessible to conference ticket owners, there were still plenty of activities to be...

By Margarida Fonseca on 09/26/09 2

Digital activism: using social media to change to world

Online social media nowadays seem like perfect tools for initiating social change in the world. Anyone with a certain goal in mind can reach large groups of individuals, spread awareness, raise a fund and get people to feel involved....

By Marc Stumpel on 09/26/09 1

Hybrids for the Commons

Our notion of the commons hails from England, where a maze of paths precluded farmland from encroaching on collectively-owned sites, allowing people to trade, gossip, and entertain each other. These sanctioned areas were only shut down if they weren’t...

By Morgan Currie on 09/26/09 5

No.1 Social Networking Site: The Web

When discussing social networking sites and social networking as a phenomenon, why do we only mention websites like Facebook, MySpace, Hyves, etc? The web itself is a social networking tool down to its core. When the internet was created,...

By Niels de Hoog on 09/26/09 Comments Off

Recommendation vs Consumption in the social networks

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine published The Long Tail article in October 2004 to describe an statistic feature of some statistical distributions that affect to current and future business models. Since then, traditional marketing field has became totally...

By Susana Zaragoza on 09/26/09 1

Are you a nerd, a geek, a dork or a dweeb?

In a new media class at the university everyone always has some kind of addiction. There are students who are addicted to games, some who are addicted to blogs, others to dating sites or stream-videos and chats. Eventually, they...

By Marta Colpani on 09/26/09 1

Wikipedia – Anyone can edit? Actually, no.

On the mainpage of Wikipedia.org you can read, “Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”. I would like to contest this. I am anybody and I was not able to make a Wiki. What happened, you might ask....

By Gwen Keupe on 09/24/09 Comments Off

Sexuality and Wikipedia

Foucault argued that political power and coercion is not only exercised by our government but also by institutions which we don’t immediately see as political, like our education or our healthcare. I would like to add Wikipedia to that...

By Jelle Kamsma on 09/24/09 Comments Off

Wikipedia = reliable

A lof of comments on the reliability of Wikipedia are getting old. These questions do not really concern Wikipedia, but the question: What is a usable source of information? Wikipedia is off course a unique example, but is it any...

By Albert Cornelissen on 09/24/09 Comments Off

Wikipedia: A Corporate Hub?

Few years ago, Dutch snowboarders tried to create an entry in Wikipedia for BigAirBAG, a Dutch brand of air cushion that can be used to absorb the impact while landing freestyle snowboarding, skiing, mountain biking, BMX, etc. tricks. The entry was deleted after an editor noted that the company is...

By Simeona Petkova on 09/24/09 1

Wikipedia material ?

Before this assignment I knew nothing about posting to Wikipedia, I’ve only been a reader. I just found out that it is actually quite difficult to simply add an entry to this online encyclopedia. In the past I once...

By Rakesh Kanhai on 09/23/09 Comments Off

Researching Wikipedia: Activity Streams & Document Network Location

Wikipedia is quickly emerging as a research object. Considering the incredible amount of (meta)data Wikipedia contains there are legions of possible ways to do useful Wikipedia research. Today, I would like to talk about the possibilities and benefits of...

By Joery Bruijntjes on 09/23/09 Comments Off

Wiki’s Political Point of View?

A conflict usually has two or more oppositional factions. They all have their own reason for this conflict, they all have a different point of view on this conflict, and most important; they do not agree with each other...

By Harro Heijboer on 09/22/09 Comments Off

‘Useless Content’ – Part 2

This week assignment for New Media Practices was writing an Wikipedia entry. Although this clarified a lot about Wikipedia and its policies, the job caused me a lot of frustration. I wrote an entry about the Brazilian NGO I...

By ellen sluis on 09/22/09 Comments Off

‘Useless Content’ – Part 1

‘Wikipedia is not a valid source’. That’s a common critique on the online encyclopedia. Erin Harty from the University of Idaho stresses that the information on Wikipedia doesn’t have any academic background and that it ‘is not really an...

By ellen sluis on 09/22/09 Comments Off

Wikipedia: a Social Playground

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is an interesting product of the Web 2.0. Wikipedia asks its users to actively participate, add and change the content of the website, in order to create a knowledge database which is more up to...

By Charlotte Hendriks on 09/22/09 2

The Bold Sisters of Wikipedia

Even though the site Wikipedia itself is the most known project of the Wikimedia foundation, there are several sister projects that are interesting and worth of researching. There is, for example, the Wiktionary, which is, quite obviously, a dictionary,...

By Desiree de Jong on 09/22/09 Comments Off

Astroturfing on Wikipedia

As Wikipedia is currently the number 7 most visited website in the world according to Alexa, and a major source of information for all layers of society, it makes sense to engage in a critical review of its benefits,...

By Niels de Hoog on 09/22/09 Comments Off

The semantic web versus Wikipedia?

From the day of birth of the Wikipedia project, the online encyclopedia has been a highly controversial case. The debates range from information accuracy (including the inquiry of the information-knowledge relation once again) to the pyramidic usermodel (often undermined...

By Sjoerd Tuinema on 09/21/09 1