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

Giving MLM’s a Makeover: Are Beauty Gurus Legitimizing LipSense?

YouTube influencers have become increasingly important to businesses in the last few years. Viewers are turning to them to know what’s hot and what’s not. But, “with great power comes great responsibility” and online influencers should take this into...

By Nicole Leeflang on 09/24/17 Comments Off

Facial ID scanning: An advertisers’ dream, or a consumers’ nightmare?

A couple of weeks ago, a traveler noticed a camera in one of the digital advertising screens at a train station in the Netherlands. A photo of this ‘hidden’ camera was then posted on Twitter, questioning the purpose of these...

By Els Versluis on 09/24/17 Comments Off

‘M’ Assistant – a New Territory For Advertising

‘M’ is an Artificial Intelligent virtual assistant inside Messenger which aims to be helpful to its users when appropriate. M Assistant analyzes their normal conversation on Messenger and pops up to suggest one of the features within the app...

By Gergana Ivanova on 09/24/17 Comments Off

From Chocolate Chips to Online – Creating a Cookie Monster

Project by: Daniël Landman, Nick van der Meulen, Nicola Romagnoli and Seastar So. Link to Final Project. Cookies are the most well-known form of online tracking and can be used for a variety of reasons such as recording personal...

By Daniël Landman on 10/16/15 Comments Off

Be There or Be Square: Instagram Introduces New Sizes

Be There or Be Square: Instagram Introduces New Sizes Many frequent users of Instagram (including myself) at some point experienced the following scenario: a moment captured with the camera on your smartphone is significant enough to share on Instagram....

By Eva Hekman on 09/15/15 Comments Off

We Are Dread: A Review of the Dread Exhibition at De Hallen, Haarlem

By Lani Shadduck & Lucy Chinen “Dread trembles in my pocket. Dread chirps incessantly. Dread flashes and bounces. Dread summons me a hundred times a day to pay attention to my phone or my laptop, and stiffening...

By Lani Shadduck on 10/09/13 Comments Off

How Do You Like Your Phone, Sir?

Technology is factually making our lives easier and more efficient, even though this notion comes with the critique that we get more lazy and rely too much on something we know too little about. Smartphones carry much more tools than...

By Ihab Khiri on 09/09/13 Comments Off

Facebook enhances the brand image in consumer minds

Facebook is becoming a marketing tool involved in the 2.0. strategy, itself involved in the global brand’s strategy. The 2.0. strategy draws on social networks, as a marketing medium, and has a bidirectional communication that calls for creativity, rigor and...

By V Weydert on 09/08/13 Comments Off

Warning! Your message may turn against you!

The context: Last week witnessed a turmoil on the Romanian online media regarding an advertising campaign. The latter belongs to pharmaceutical company Secom Romania and introduces Neuro Optimzer, a treatment based on pills that improves certain brain functions for...

By Irina Enache on 10/18/12 1

Forgotten Realms: Revisiting the Classics

The revisiting of favourite films and novels is a common practice, in fact for many, the notion of ‘re-reading the classics’ can be even more enjoyable and enlightening than their initial interpretation. Yet for gaming, which has always and...

By Joseph Jackson on 10/03/12 1

[Essay] How New Media reshapes the music industry

I imagine myself at 14 years old winding the tapes back and forward with a pen and listening to Metallica for the hundredth time. Well, nothing else mattered at that time. Most Romanian around their 30thies grew up with...

By Mihaela Naftanaila on 09/08/12 Comments Off

Getting real

“We have lived through more than half a century of being constantly told that the future of food was artificial, the future of books, newspapers, medicine and school was virtual. And that we would soon deal entirely with computerized teachers...

By Patrycja Szumacher on 09/08/12 Comments Off

Thoughts about the unveiling of Iphone 4S

Today was the official release of Iphone 5. Oops, IPhone 4S I mean. I followed through the NY Times and The Guardian‘s live blogs and Twitter. While I was overwhelmed with an incredible amount of data, #letstalkiphone quickly become...

By Juliana Paiva on 10/04/11 1

Book Review: The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser

The Filter Bubbler refers to the personalization processes taking place on the Web, which shape what content you see and more important what content you don't get to see. Big players like Google and Facebook feed you what they...

By Jorrit Schaap on 09/17/11 1

Giving Away Free Digital Content: How Far Can You Go?

Giving away free content is nothing new. It has been around as part of business strategies for centuries. However, many online businesses are using free digital content as a means of getting attention and building their reputation. How far...

By Jorrit Schaap on 09/14/11 Comments Off

Google’s Doodles: How transforming logo can empower a brand

I’m always get excited whenever I enter Google’s page and there’s an intervention in the logo – more or less expressive – featuring a holiday, birthday or something totally new to me with drawings, videos, games or interactive animations....

By Juliana Paiva on 09/11/11 2

Raising awareness on Product Placement

Advertising is everywhere. From print ads in magazines and billboards, pop ups and spam on Internet, or commercials on television, it is virtually impossible not to see advertisements in daily life. Some researchers even say that we see on...

By Clément Adam on 09/11/11 Comments Off

True Blood invades virtual reality

The development of new communication means in recent years has turned into a genuine PR and advertising opportunity. The rise of the Internet together with the changes in the behavior of the media consumer triggered a special interest in...

By Luana Pascu on 09/10/11 Comments Off

Digital Comics: Not as Invincible as They Could Be

As a Toronto born comic book fan, I’ve probably visited my local comic book shop, Cyber City Comix, once a week for the last fifteen years. Every Wednesday I would go by and pick up the latest issues of...

By Ronen Shay on 10/18/10 Comments Off

E-books – The Black Market. Can We Stop It?

Along with the growth of the popularity of e-books as well as iPad, e-reader and other devices that allow for reading digital publications on the screen there is a huge increase in books piracy, what causes enormous losses for...

By Michal Kielbasa on 10/17/10 Comments Off

New Media drives project: Times Square to Art Square

Times Square to Art Square is a project to turn all billboards on Times Square into art. At the opening party of Dutchproblogger’s book Sex, Blogs & Rock ‘n’ Roll I was fortunate to meet Justus Bruns, one...

By Janice Wong on 10/03/10 1

Shift in power

If you google “social media” or “social networksites” you will receive tons of links. Everybody seems to use social networksites and you need to be involved soon. Most of the links use a kind of paranoia, to make you...

By Hanneke Mertens on 09/27/10 1

New Media and Marketing

Since the rise of use of new media, marketing departments seem to be stressed out because they don’t know how to handle this new medium. Should they invest? How, where and how can they measure the effects? Companies don’t...

By Hanneke Mertens on 09/16/10 Comments Off

Augmented reality as the NEW marketing tool

The back cover of this weeks Grazia magazine shows a new add campaign of United Colors of Benetton. Readers are being encouraged to interact with Benetton by signing in for the casting for the new campaign. Costumers can become...

By Jorien De Wandeler on 09/13/10 2