Author Profile

  • Simeona Petkova
  • Url: http://www.simeona.mosselveld.com
  • Posts: 7
  • About the user: My name is Simeona Petkova and I am a second year Research Master student at UVA's Media Studies Faculty. I have my BA in Journalism and MA in Electronic Broadcasting from Sofia University. New Media (quite broad, isn't it?) has become a main field of my current academic interest and through this blog i will share topics that are or have evolved to be important for me.

Author Archive

A story about YouTube’s googlization and the hidden community

Simeona Petkova | 20 November 2009, 10:54 pm | 1 comment | tags: , , , , , , , ,
<p style=”text-align: justify;”>“From You to Tube: YouTube’s googlization and the hidden community” is a short video created by Lasse Timmermann and me for the Digital Methods Seminar. It  follows the conceptual and methodological framework of “distilling the ‘textual grammar’ of a website history”<a href=”#_ftn1″>[1]</a> set by the Digital Methods Initiative in the video “Google and the Politics of Tabs”. We…

Snapping Profile Snaps

Simeona Petkova | 31 October 2009, 6:04 pm | tags: , , , , ,

Recently, checking my RSS reader I came across this: Profile Snaps. TechCrunch was serious about it: 

Recently launched Profile  Snaps allows for additional context for content on news websites and blogs, by providing in-text profiles that gives the reader a snapshot of information about a public figure…….So if you clicked on Barack Obama’s Profile Snap, you’d see an about section, which gives a…

The notion of ‘disorientation’ and the proxy server

Simeona Petkova | 15 October 2009, 11:29 pm | tags: , , , ,

 Few days ago, I was editing my assignment-entry on Wikipedia (logged in) when I received a warning (generated by bot or editor) that the IP I am currently using might belong to a proxy server. Although the administrator of the network denied he is using a proxy, I was intrigued enough to further elaborate on what a proxy server is and…

Twitter and the Vertical Stacking

Simeona Petkova | 07 October 2009, 9:05 pm | tags: , , , , , , ,

In Politics of the Very Worst[1] (1999) and Information Bomb[2] (2000) Paul Virilio argues that ‘speed’ historically has been a source of power in all societies (from horsemanship, to railway transportation, naval power, flight and finally information technology). ‘Speed’ has become a ‘power itself’ especially in the digital era in which technologies converge the past, the present and the future by supporting only…

The ‘Flow’ of SNS

Simeona Petkova | 01 October 2009, 12:05 am | tags: , , ,

Recently, a good friend of mine asked if he can leave a comment on Wikipedia’s page. This made me think how frequently used online platforms can shape our expectations toward other online platforms. Usually these expectations get detected by the platforms’ designers and they become available  through the next platform’s upgrade. No surprise if soon Wikipedia enables comments. In Software Takes…

Wikipedia: A Corporate Hub?

Simeona Petkova | 24 September 2009, 12:23 am | 1 comment | tags: , , , , ,

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 not registered in USA and its name is too ‘ordinary’. It was also a product and products should not be placed…

FLIP SIDES OF PARTICIPATORY CULTURE (Book Review)

Simeona Petkova | 13 September 2009, 12:51 pm | tags: , , , , , ,

Has celebrating users’ generated content become a dominant ‘grand’ narrative of web entrepreneurs, scholars and online businesses? What is hidden behind the participatory buzz of Web 2.0? In Bastard Culture! User Participation and the extension of cultural industries Mirko Tobias Schaefer demystifies this framework by critically exploring the network of discourses that constitute ‘participatory culture’. Unlike other researches in the field, Schafer…