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

Free Trial Surfing or how to reshape affordances through institutional legitimization

DoNotPay is a company that announced a new app called ‘Free Trial Surfing’ which generates fake credit card details that users can use to sign up for free trials of (web) services without risking having to pay after the...

By Dimitri Koehorst on 09/22/19 Comments Off

How Can Art Be Subversive in a Platform System? The Case of Benjamin Grosser

What would happen if one morning, a morning like many others, after you got up, you discovered that your Facebook home page is completely empty, without any type of content? I’m not talking about a crash or...

By Tommaso Campagna on 09/24/18 Comments Off

Financial superpowers? Cryptocurrency and the next generation

Pigzbe, a digital piggy-bank has just appeared on the market, with one goal: introducing children to the world of cryptocurrency. Filippo Yacob, CEO of the company, claims that this device will give a new generation of children “financial superpowers”....

By Anastasia Pelini on 09/23/18 Comments Off

Weeping Angel: The latest surveillance tool, that can turn your smart TV into a bug TV

Earlier this year, a revelation by Wikileaks called Vault7 refueled the privacy debate concerning intrusive media (Hacker News; The Verge, 2017). The series released documents on CIA activity between 2013 and 2016, showing how the intelligence agency gained access...

By Nina Welt on 09/25/17 Comments Off

Painting your password on your face: Apple´s new Face ID and its implications on the security of its users.

On the 12th of September, Apple launched their new flagship model, the iPhone X. As usual, it was either met with oohs and aahs, or it was met with cynicism. This article will not focus on the price, design...

By Jimi Cornelisse on 09/24/17 Comments Off

Cyborg Unplug – Counter-Surveillance Device or Product to profit of Fear?

For everyone being paranoid that strangers could spy on them using drones, cameras, microphones or even Google Glasses – finally, a solution has arrived, which is going on pre-order on September 30, 2014. Cyborg Unplug is a gadget no...

By Daniela Diewock on 09/15/14 Comments Off

Are your nude pictures save in the cloud?

How safe are the files you keep in your cloud? We live in a world where more and more things are being saved at distance servers, and we can access them only thru an internet access. How can we...

By Chaïm Wijnberg on 09/11/14 Comments Off

Online celebrity leaked pictures. An ongoing debate about security and privacy in the Digital era.

Last day of August ended with startling news. On Sunday 31, a hacker leaked naked celebrity pictures online. He apparently breached the cloud storage and cloud computing service from Apple, iCloud, thanks to a supposedly security vulnerability in the...

By Giovanna Salazar Ojeda on 09/11/14 Comments Off

The Cloud: The Cost of Digital Comfort

Last week’s Internet sensation, the leakage of compromising pictures of approximately hundred (mostly female) celebrities, has evoked different reactions that can be divided into three categories: Excitement about the exposure, Indignation about the violation of privacy, and Fear for...

By Markéta Horázná on 09/09/14 Comments Off

On Leaked Pictures & Hackerphobia

Over the course of the past week, the celebrity hacking scandal has been widely and diversely discussed. Its victims have posted their comments on the matter on Facebook and Twitter and various media outlets have reported on the issue....

By Thom on 09/08/14 Comments Off

Website defacement and the ethos of the unknown

Website defacement (along with practices like distributed denial of service attacks and password cracking) is one of the most frequently deployed methods used by hackers. Perhaps the most infamous example of this practice is the defacing of the PayPal...

By Jakko Kemper on 09/12/13 Comments Off

Total transparancy or personal privacy?

With the possibility to send, spread and pick up information online in a blink of an eye, the demand for transparancy is growing. Hackers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden publish classified and sensitive government information. According to them...

By Jennifer Veldman on 09/06/13 Comments Off

Syria: Cracking down on digital dissidents

For Syrian dissidents, social networking sites are essential for bypassing traditional media and communication channels. But in doing so, online activists might all too easily fall prey to the government’s digital surveillance. Social networking services like Facebook, Twitter and...

By Mathias Schuh on 10/19/12 1

Fabbing in Brussels!

The official opening of Fablab.iMAL that took place on Friday 14th in the well-known Brussels-based Media Lab iMAL (Center for Digital Cultures and Technology) gave us the chance to look closer at personal fabrication and to observe curious artifacts....

By Aurelie Ghalim on 09/24/12 1

you will _KNOW how_ : interview with Nancy Mauro-Flude

I first encountered the work of Tasmanian performance artist and media researcher Nancy Mauro-Flude during The Art of Hacking exhibition opening at the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk) on September 9, 2011. Mauro-Flude’s Error_in_Time(V.T_3), a poetic coding performance featuring...

By Kendall Grady on 10/31/11 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

Book Review: KINGPIN by Kevin Poulsen

If you like police stories with persecution, infiltration and investigation KINGPIN may be just the right book for you. Written by Kevin Poulsen, it is an exciting story of the rise of one hacker to the control of the...

By Mario Gesteira on 09/21/11 1

Lulzsec – Cyber terrorists, hacktivists or artists?

Phone hacking dominated British headlines during the summer months this year and the revelations were so detrimental to Murdoch’s empire that he thought it was best to shut down The News of the World – believing it had let...

By Christopher Mead on 09/14/11 Comments Off