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

From art to ethical design; Studio Roosegaarde’s quest for a sustainable and aesthetic future

The clock is ticking: sea levels and temperatures are rising, plastic is building up, and animals face extinction. What if art can be the activator for change?

By Victor Loye on 10/20/20 Comments Off

Life in the Amazon(e)

Introduction In 1995, the then thirty-year-old Jeff Bezos founded Amazon and by using the emerging World Wide Web, he was able to sell books globally, from his garage. Although he could probably not imagine that he would one day...

By Lieve Keizer on 10/24/18 Comments Off

“Hidden Cost”: Social Commerce Practices and the Collaboration between Snapchat and Amazon

In an era when S-commerce (social commerce) is dominating digital environments, social media platforms use more and more tools to achieve this combination of commercial and social activities. Like Instagram and Pinterest, now Snapchat jumped onto this trend and...

By Aikaterini Mniestri on 10/19/18 Comments Off

Swift Access at the Cost of Swift Access: Diginotar

On the tenth of July 2011, the Dutch web security company Diginotar was hacked by (supposedly) a student from Iran. He was able to corrupt the so called SSL certificates and break into Gmail accounts and government websites. Nine...

By Stijnie Thuijs on 09/14/11 Comments Off

Getting data, sharing data and raising political awareness.

Using vision to amplify cognition. According to the Light Switch Theory, vision appeared on Earth around 543 million years ago and triggered the Cambrian explosion (evolution’s Big Bang). Before that none of the living entities could see and relied to...

By olga paraskevopoulou on 05/07/11 Comments Off

Interactive information visualization for disaster/crisis awareness

Natural disasters always have threatened man’s existence. However, as the report ‘New Technologies in Emergencies and Conflicts’ by the United Nations cites; “the number of humanitarian crises has been rising in recent years. Moreover, disasters strike more frequently, and...

By Maarten Hoogvliet on 05/04/10 Comments Off

Watching You Watch Me!! (…on Facebook)

The Web 2.0 application FACEBOOK analysed through FOUCAULTS PHILOSOPHIES ON SOCIETY. WARNING|DANGER: With this knowledge a consciousness is created with which people become aware about the possibilities of people watching/observing/monitoring people, both virtually as in the real world.

By Kai Henriquez on 09/22/08 3