New Media M.A. Research Blog | Media Studies, University of Amsterdam | 2011

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: an interview on Chinese internet usage

How do we find happiness? I cannot answer that question for you, but it is relevant to everybody. The state of happiness was deemed so important by the Founding Fathers of the United States that they added it to...

By Yeun Au on 10/30/11 Comments Off

What makes a good review online?

Some observations from the paper "Being Heard in Review Communities: Communication Tactics and Review Prominence".

By Andrian Georgiev on 10/30/11 Comments Off

Interview with Elias Aboujaoude MD, author of ‘Virtually You’

‘Virtually You‘ is the book I reviewed some time back. It talks about the dangerous effects life online can have on our personalities and lives. I managed to get hold of the author of the book, Elias Aboujaoude MD,...

By Ave Tampere on 10/30/11 Comments Off

Netneutrality: a product of the control society?

Early May 2011, Dutch telecom provider KPN announced her plans to block certain mobile Internet services like Voice over IP, in order to offer these services for an additional fee. One of the reasons for these measures is the...

By Renoud Netjes on 10/30/11 Comments Off

The Knight’s Move: Mark Shepard and the Sentient City

I received an e-mail in my inbox. Mark Shepard was coming to The Hague for a lecture on the sentient city. It was part of a lecture series called The Knight’s Move, which aims on cutting across disciplines and...

By Bree Tahapary on 10/29/11 1

Interview with Sanne Stricker from Roamler

Sanne Stricker (26) graduated cum laude from the Master of Business Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her master thesis focused on the influence of negative tweets on consumer attitude towards brands and received a lot of media attention...

By Jorrit Schaap on 10/29/11 Comments Off

Interview with James Robinson: Mapping the World’s Signal

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blogpost about Open Signal Maps, an application for android that maps the world’s signal. I used the application myself for several days and it worked pretty fine and gave me better...

By Daan Fliervoet on 10/29/11 Comments Off

New Media in Brazil: An interview with the curator of FILE

FILE stands for International Festival of Electronic Language and is the biggest festival of new media in Brazil. The event happens annually in São Paulo and eventually in other cities of Brazil and holds projects, installations, screenings and presentations...

By Juliana Paiva on 10/29/11 Comments Off

Interview: Marlus Araujo

In Brazil we can see overtime more and more designers starting to work with programming and merging those tools to create their projects. The figure of the designer/programmer has emerged and became fundamental in the web market and the...

By Mario Gesteira on 10/29/11 1

Introduction: the Facebooth

This post is a summary of the presentation held on October 20 during the final session of the New Media Practices course 2011, with some additional information about the artistic and practical background of the booth. The Facebooth is...

By Joep Hegger on 10/28/11 Comments Off

The How-I-met-your-MOM-Project

New Media Studies is a programme that is constantly changing, evolving and thus outdated on an annual basis. Its theoretical base is a solid one, its pragmatic learnings are however determined by the hegemonic character of the relation between...

By Jeroen Rijskamp on 10/28/11 1

2012: An Offline Year for Bram van Montfoort

Bram van Montfoort (’87) is an online man. He once started with a dial-up internet connection and egg timer to keep track of ‘online’-time, nowadays Bram is equipped with iPad, PC and mobile phone and can be followed on...

By Leander Roet on 10/27/11 3

Visualization of MoM Students

In our project week we researched the social media activity of our fellow new media students. We, as new media students, do lots of social media research but how do we use these social media by ourselves? So, it...

By Daan Fliervoet on 10/26/11 Comments Off

Online Fan Communities and Research Ethics: An Interview with Dr. Natasha Whiteman

Where there are communities there will, almost inevitably, be researchers observing and studying them. Just as the Internet provides a refuge for fan communities to dwell, so to does it provide a site for academics to research. Dr Natasha...

By Liam Voice on 10/26/11 1

Thou Speakest the Purest Nonsense! – On Politeness and New Media

Even though most of our parents have taught us the basic rules of how to be a civil and polite person, we seem to apply these rules in a completely random way. No one has ever told us to...

By Roos van Tongerloo on 10/25/11 Comments Off

An interview with Jerom Fischer

Some say this is the best time for artist and creative entrepreneurs. Others think the creative industries are coming to an end thanks to the negative impact of the Internet on industries like the music industry. Since I’m interested...

By Sebastiaan Smink on 10/25/11 Comments Off

Interview met Reinder Rustema: Nieuwe Media & Politiek

Voor veel studenten Nieuwe Media aan de UvA is Reinder Rustema geen onbekende. Naast het doceren aan de UvA is Rustema een oudgediende op het vlak van Nieuwe Media en politiek. Zo maakte hij ooit deel uit van De...

By Floris Spronk on 10/25/11 1

Hey Jimmy Wales, Nobody Cares About your Life in the Spanish Wikipedia

What happens when you knock on the ‘door’ of the Wikipedia founder? Apparently nothing, if you are Spanish language speaker. Compelled to create an article for ‘the mother of all wikis’, I assumed that writing about some hobby or...

By Jacobo Corujeira on 10/25/11 1

Pretty Lies

Take a look at yourself in the mirror. This is who you are. Raw and honest, the mirror never lies. Now take a look at your Facebook profile picture. Is this who you are? Or do we only get...

By Sebastiaan Smink on 10/24/11 Comments Off

Finally it comes together

When I was writing my thesis at the Theatre School back in 2008, I was really excited in doing research and reading more theoretical and academic work about the theories behind the use of video in art and theatre....

By Maarten Jansen on 10/24/11 8

What to do with a brilliant new App Idea?

Interview with Co-Founder and Director of SellAnApp: Milan van den Bovenkamp SellAnApp focuses on mobile app development through crowd-sourcing and funding and thereby gives everyone the opportunity to ‘transform their ideas into an actual mobile app’. Sharing your app...

By Anne Laurine Stadermann on 10/23/11 2

Memes as a tool

A very powerful tool would be to be able to release information inside social networks that would go viral and be incorporated to pop culture by becoming a meme. There are many factors that influence the destiny of a...

By Mario Gesteira on 10/23/11 Comments Off

“Funny is fun but humor is cool.” – The New Style of Humor in China’s Film

Ning Hao, from Taiyuan, Shanxi province, who had studied at Beijing Normal University in Art Department, and in June 2003 graduated from the Beijing Film Academy School of Photography. Winner of “The Eighth Student Film Festival Best Director Award”...

By Duohuai Zhang on 10/22/11 1

qwiki – can linear narratives still be relevant in hyperlinked contexts?

Some time has passed since the official launch of qwiki (see the Masters of Media Blog initial impressions). Although still in alpha, a more profound critique can be put forward as the platform evolved and opened itself to users.

By Daniel Luiz dos Santos on 10/22/11 Comments Off