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

[Event] Unlike Us #3 | Social Media: Design or Decline

This March, the Unlike Us conference is taking place in Amsterdam for a second consecutive year. Hosted by Amsterdam’s Institute of Network Cultures, the event gathers academics, artists and activists to discuss ‘social media monopolies and their alternatives’. Unlike...

By Larissa Hildebrandt on 02/28/13 Comments Off

Web Aesthetics ‘book adaption’ on Facebook

By: Basri Hoogstrate, Jeroen Rademakers, Jules Mataly and Juliana Marques The Wild Card Symposium, part of our Master Degree at the University of Amsterdam gave us the occasion to read a book as a group, discuss it and came...

By Juliana Marques on 11/20/12 1

Captives of the Social: Facebook and Digital Pantopticism

As a network, the Web is usually connoted as an open-ended, anarchic and non-hierarchic environment. Compared to previous modes of organization, its distributed nature is considered an improvement over centralized and decentralized one-to-many communications and productions. (( Alexander R....

By Stijn Wonderen van on 10/19/12 Comments Off

Social media in Iraq: in search of the truth

Like elsewhere in the Middle East, in Iraq social media is a fast growing way of communication. Contrary to the situation ten years ago, the use of mobile phone is nowadays nearly universal. Internet cafes are booming and the...

By Wieneke Vucht van on 10/18/12 Comments Off

Facebook + Performance Society = ?

Last week, the documentary ‘Nooit Meer Slapen’ (No more Sleeping) was broadcasted on the Dutch television. The documentary stated that at 3 o’clock in the night, over 1 million Dutch citizens are wide-awake. ‘At home, night rest is becoming...

By Serena Westra on 10/17/12 Comments Off

TL;DR – Language Shifts in Social Media

A pedantic Semantic Introduction Media has shaped the language we use in conversation since the unprecedented invention of the printing press which allowed for the emergence of mass media. Content found in news feeds, published articles and gossip columns dictate...

By Joseph Jackson on 09/10/12 Comments Off

Some word of advice to Mr. Zuckerberg

I am fairly skilled with computers. I develop websites and quite often help other people out with their computer problems. But finding things in the privacy settings within Facebook always costs me a little too much time and effort....

By Alain on 08/30/12 Comments Off

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

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

Social Media Circus

Last week I saw Boom Chicago‘s ‘Social Media Circus‘ comedy show. With sketches, improvisation, stand-up, video and music the actors provide a hilarious show “deflating the hype, speaking the truth, attacking the fools and celebrating the heroes”. It is...

By Annet Bos on 10/16/11 Comments Off

New Media and the Syrian uprisings: one student’s perspective.

Edward Said wrote in his book Covering Islam that historically the western mass media have exercised the power of representation over the (in this case) Islamic ‘other’ and suppresses the possible multiplicity of 800 000 000 global Islamic citizens...

By Jamie Franklin on 10/14/11 1

Blendr. It Won’t Work – How About “Straight” Grindr?

Blendr is a geosocial networking application allowing users to connect with nearby people based on common interests. Created by the same developers as the "hook-up" app Grindr, the focus Blendr has on meeting people through common interests and platonic...

By Autumn Hand on 10/10/11 Comments Off

Facebook, towards ubiquitous computing?

Last week an opinion piece by sociologist Ben Caudron was published in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. In it, Caudron expressed his views on the latest announcements by Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg at F8. The most interesting new changes...

By Bree Tahapary on 10/10/11 Comments Off

Challenging Time: Google Plus and Facebook Timeline

‘The most fun thing about going out is when you run into friends unexpectedly. With Hangouts, this sort of meeting becomes possible on the internet for the first time. Let your friends know you’re available and find out who...

By Stijnie Thuijs on 10/04/11 Comments Off

Diverse audience consumption of social media

I love statistics. I love seeing my Facebook friend count increase. I love looking at what songs I played most in my iTunes. (Unless it is an artist that is too embarrassing to love. Luckily you can reset this...

By Yeun Au on 10/04/11 Comments Off

Social Network Abstinence

In this postmodern age, McLuhan‘s thoughts about medium as an extension of ourselves seems more and more accurate. However, if the medium is us and we are the medium, how we can detach from it? Nowadays, social media is one...

By Juliana Paiva on 10/04/11 2

How to do comparative media analysis on the web: Start small.

I’ve always thought that in order to understand a network, like the web, better, we should be able to understand as much of the objects and actors that the network itself is made of, as possible. Whilst finishing my...

By Demet Dagdelen on 10/03/11 Comments Off

Is it worthwhile to develop a Facebook application?

With more than 800 million users Facebook is currently the most widely used social network platform on the Internet. Facebook states that more than 50% of their users are active everyday and each of them has approximately 130 friends....

By Jesse Oyegbesan on 10/03/11 Comments Off

Social death of social networks

The question I was asking myself recently is what makes a social network cool or uncool? Why there are social networks in which having an account is considered embarressing? Why there are exsisting social networks to which some people...

By Urszula Jurgiel on 10/02/11 Comments Off

What Juliet Didn’t Ask

Deepening the Motivations and Consequences of Facebook Aliases I was a freshman in college when Facebook was fresh off the server. The social network’s inaugural class has since grown up, and so has its Facebook identity. An established social...

By Kendall Grady on 10/02/11 Comments Off

Social Network Analysis: Considering Alternative Methodologies

The increasing extent of the Internet has also witnessed an incredible increase in the popularity of online social networking. Websites such as ‘Facebook‘ and ‘Twitter‘ are now the most frequently referred to examples although there are countless other social...

By Philip Breek on 10/01/11 Comments Off

How Gamification Triggers Facebook in Being on Addictive Game of Sociality

I wrote a thesis about the new trend of gamification and specifically the gamification of the social networking site. With the gamification of the social network I am not speaking about the invasion of social games like FarmVille, but...

By Philip Man on 09/28/11 3