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

‘Quiet Ride’ in Uber: Technology Defeats Small Talk.

In May 2019, Uber announced that they have added the quiet ride feature. People who call an uber can now make a preference for the level of conversation they want to have with their driver: prefer quiet, or let...

By Cem Akca on 09/23/19 Comments Off

Solutionism in peer-to-peer networks: solutions by Supshare

Abstract: Thanks to the sharing economy, people who need a certain product or service are easily digitally connected to people willing and able to provide that service or product. As a result, platforms like Supshare that offer these solutions...

By Laura Briganti on 09/23/18 Comments Off

The only way to save the Internet is to claim it back from Big Data

Sometime in November, the proportion of humans on earth using the web will exceed 50%. Close to 4 billion people will have become internet “users”, bringing with them 4 billion sets of data. Tim-Berners Lee created the internet and...

By Lucie Chateau on 09/23/18 Comments Off

“What’s mine is yours”; sharing a wardrobe with strangers online with The Nu Wardrobe

Subletting a living space on Airbnb, sharing a car as mode of transportation with Blablacar or borrowing a stranger’s power drill for a couple of hours using Peerby has become a well-established and often used practice in 2017. Enter...

By Nora Lauff on 09/24/17 Comments Off

Trust Me: How Trust is Established in Airbnb

The financial crisis in 2008 marked the advent of the sharing economy, and its motto “access trumps ownership” (The Economist) came out as a good option to deal with the crisis which mainly occurred as a result of the...

By Olga Resetnaka on 10/21/16 Comments Off