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TERF Wars

TERF Wars

Oscar Fitzpatrick, Caitlin Harzem, Gerry LaBarbera Abstract: There was a time when speaking of JK Rowling would primarily include topics regarding children’s literature, or specifically the Harry Potter franchise. In 2020 much of the debate surrounding JK Rowling is...
Censorship creates discourse: the implications of banning political advertising

Censorship creates discourse: the implications of banning political advertising

Ayushi Arora (13237748, arora.ayushi@gmail.com) Thomas Ba (13286544, thomas.ba.7@outlook.it) Maurice Dharampal (10439250, maurice.dharampal@student.uva.nl) Alex Soete (13208918, alex.soete@gmail.com) Introduction Is free-speech under attack? Founder and CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg has recently joined the head of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, in the...
Who gets previewed? Racial Bias and User Experiments within Twitter’s Algorithmic Image Cropping

Who gets previewed? Racial Bias and User Experiments within Twitter’s Algorithmic Image Cropping

Recently Twitter users have been discovering the algorithmic bias of Twitter's image cropping system. How have they experimented and what do we do with the results? Why is Twitter selecting white faces? Why does it prefer Ted Cruz with...
“Blue Tick Brigade”: A critique of Twitter’s verification system as a shaper of online self-presentation

“Blue Tick Brigade”: A critique of Twitter’s verification system as a shaper of online self-presentation

By Agustín Ferrari Braun, Eleni Maragkou, Marie-Liesse H, Shivaani Gore Over the course of the past years, politics in Europe and the United States have become increasingly concerned with the nature of online personhood. Only last month, the far-right...
Beyond-viral marketing, Nike just does it again

Beyond-viral marketing, Nike just does it again

On September 3rd, 2018, Nike released their latest ad campaign to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their iconic ‘Just Do It’ brand. To the surprise of many, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick was the face of the campaign. This...
Gab.ai: Freedom of (conservative) speech?

Gab.ai: Freedom of (conservative) speech?

A few weeks ago a Norwegian journalist posted the Pullitzer Prize-winning ‘napalm girl’ photograph on Facebook. But instead of founding the intended discussion, he found his account suspended and the picture removed. The picture contained nudity, which may not...
Twitter’s “buy” button creates one-click shopping

Twitter’s “buy” button creates one-click shopping

Twitter, a microblogging platform with 271 million monthly active users began beta testing a “buy” button, allowing users to purchase exclusive merchandise from within the Twitter app. According to Twitter’s blog post, released September 8, 2014: “Today we are...
Tweet, Tweet, Buy. (Or bye bye Tweet?)

Tweet, Tweet, Buy. (Or bye bye Tweet?)

Last week I received an e-mail from Twitter with the heading ‘We’ve updated our Privacy Policy and terms of Service.’ That’s always interesting news. What was even more interesting was the easily announced new feature Twitter is testing: a “Buy” button...
Why questioning the code in Facebook and Twitter matters

Why questioning the code in Facebook and Twitter matters

The Internet has created more possibilities for the individual and civil society. Now they can engage in higher connectivity, collective action, and freedom of expression in what Robert Harris and Rebekah Heacock term as “the creation of social capital online.”(1)...

Genres for the Digital Hangover

As boundaries between the private and public sphere are beginning to blur. It is getting harder and harder to keep private content private. Most of the times nothing major happens when you send out a personal message into the...
We Are Here: Locating micro-social dynamics of mediation

We Are Here: Locating micro-social dynamics of mediation

We Are Here (Dutch: Wij Zijn Hier) sums about 220 refugees that are actively searching for security and shelter in Amsterdam on a daily basis. In their very first blog post, they have stated their core objective: We are...
#VemPraRua

#VemPraRua

How the use of Social Media platforms can mobilize a whole nation and transform the history of a country “Vem pra rua, porque a rua é a maior arquibancada do Brasil” The sentence above was extracted from the song...
Brazil Left Facebook

Brazil Left Facebook

Although it’s winter in Brazil, the so-called ‘Brazilian Spring’ has clearly arisen in June and July 2013. The protests in Brazil show parallels to the ‘Arab Spring’ demonstrations (Dec. 2010-Feb. 2011), in which network communications were used to form a grassroots movement. Through...
Social media – the new watchdog?

Social media – the new watchdog?

September 5th the former leader of the Norwegian far right party (Progress Party), Carl I. Hagen, wrote a status update on his Facebook-profile. Here he blamed the current government for the murder of a 21-year old girl, Anja Weløy...

Twitternovels – More Twitter than novel

“Paradoxically, it is this very immutability of paper which is now increasingly proving to be an advantage rather than a weakness, particularly in the context of an ever-changing (thus ephemeral) digital publishing world.” (Ludovico 10, 2012) Though this by...
Google Maps and Fukushima: Collective Memory and Data Visualization

Google Maps and Fukushima: Collective Memory and Data Visualization

As major world events unfold before our eyes at accelerated speeds, via a host of different medias how can we process these vast quantities of information? In the digital age, we consume news round-the-clock, whether we use smart phone...
Tracking a nations mood through Twitter: visualizing how you feel

Tracking a nations mood through Twitter: visualizing how you feel

There has been a shift from static to dynamic information visualization. Lately, information visualizations are being created by user generated input. Datasets can be created by scraping Twitter for certain keywords. The project “Pulse of the Nation” has visualized...
iPhone 5: The Ultimate User Review

iPhone 5: The Ultimate User Review

Device reviews are not really the subject of choice on this blog. However, measuring the general sentiment on social networks towards a certain gadget can be quite insightful. In this post I will be examining the iPhone 5 through...
Twitter’s Homepage Evolution

Twitter’s Homepage Evolution

Every website has a history, even though it is sometimes difficult to trace. This history or evolution can tell a lot about the company and it’s goals. Twitter is an example of a website that has encountered many different...
Death penalty-what do the tweets say?

Death penalty-what do the tweets say?

  As a rational creature, man has invented many ways to exterminate his fellowmen;  gallows, stoning, crucifixion, electric chair, burning at the stake, guillotine, firing squad, gas chamber, injection with poison are only some of them. Throughout the course...
Twitter Chatter and Stock Market Trends

Twitter Chatter and Stock Market Trends

Social media as trend indicators It is not uncommon that when “social media networks” are mentioned, the most common associations among people are with platforms that promote interaction with, and sharing and exchange of user-generated content. With its exponential...

Yes we can – the use of social media by Dutch politicians during electorial campaigns in 2012

During their campaign for the 2002 Dutch elections, politicians were mainly using blogs as a mechanism to advocate their ideas on the Internet. In 2006 podcasting and postings on the Dutch Facebook equivalent “Hyves” were added as additional ways...
TL;DR – Language Shifts in Social Media

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...

Twitter vs. Established Media: Gatewatching, Information Dissemination and #OccupyLSX

A summary of paper presented at the DMI Winter School Mini-Conference, Amsterdam (January 2012) Abstract: Twitter is a social media platform where users’ messages  can take flight, gain elevation (RT function), achieve direction (@ function), and be grouped together...