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The Power of Social Media: Oil, Palm Trees and the Pedobear

The Power of Social Media: Oil, Palm Trees and the Pedobear

Who doesn’t love social media? Facebook has recently celebrated more than 1 billion active users (becoming one the biggest countries in the world), Twitter has the power to put politicians on the throne or to throw them out in...
Mendo the shop built out of books

Mendo the shop built out of books

Who or what is Mendo!? On an ordinary Thursday I’m walking in the well-known Amsterdam neighbourhood ‘de negen straatjes’ for an appointment with Joost Albronda, who is one of the owners of the design agency and bookshop Mendo....
Privacy? Who cares?

Privacy? Who cares?

What is the first thing you do when you wake up? For a huge amount of students the answer to this question is: hitting Facebook, even while still in bed. On the 4th of October 2012, Mark Zuckerberg informed...
Citizen Journalism in Egypt: The Newsfeed of the Revolution

Citizen Journalism in Egypt: The Newsfeed of the Revolution

What does it need to launch a successful media outlet? Probably a good deal of start-up capital, a team of editors, a business plan and some advertising clients. Cairo’s Rassd News Network started with two things: a Facebook page...
Unlike Us Conference – Understanding Social Media Monopolies and their Alternatives

Unlike Us Conference – Understanding Social Media Monopolies and their Alternatives

For many people, looking at Facebook is the first thing they do when they wake up. There are about 600 million users on Facebook, and you might as well say that Facebook – together with other SNS like Twitter...
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...
The Problem With Advertising-Driven Content

The Problem With Advertising-Driven Content

It’s been almost 20 years since the web made its grand entrance into the lives of average consumers. It was around that time the internet was also opened for business and companies started assessing it for its profitability. Initially...
Gigapixel photography – a new vantage point

Gigapixel photography – a new vantage point

If you enjoy roaming the virtual streets of Google Maps’ Street View, take a deep breath and dive into the unique visual experience of “Gigapixel photography”. A gigapixel photograph is, mathematically speaking, an image that consists of one billion...
Some word of advice to Mr. Zuckerberg

Some word of advice to Mr. Zuckerberg

I am fairly skilled with computers. I develop websites and quite often help other people out with their computer problems. But finding things in the privacy settings within Facebook always costs me a little too much time and effort....

Jodi Dean Says “There Is No Such Thing as the Social”

After Geert Lovink’s enthusiastic welcome speech, which also introduced Social What? Defining the Social, the first session of UnlikeUs #2, Jodi Dean (pictured right) took to the stage and launched into...

Meanwhile in Hungary

When the new media law for Hungary was passed on 21st of December 2010, many people were outraged at how much of a setback it was for press freedom in Hungary. A Facebook page named “One million people for...
Facebook 126 : 10 NING. Lessons learnt

Facebook 126 : 10 NING. Lessons learnt

When creating an online community on NING platform for newcomers in Amsterdam as part of our Masters of Media project, me and my colleagues had very ambitious plans about attracting vast amount of users to join Yoursterdam community. However...
Net Worth: Calculate your worth on Facebook

Net Worth: Calculate your worth on Facebook

My project begun with a question: What is the worth of a single Facebook user? Or: How much money does Facebook make of all the culmination of all interactions on the platform by a single user. To do this,...
Introduction: the Facebooth

Introduction: the Facebooth

This post is a summary of the presentation held on October 20 during the final session of the New Media Practices course 2011, with some additional information about the artistic and practical background of the booth. The Facebooth is...

The How-I-met-your-MOM-Project

New Media Studies is a programme that is constantly changing, evolving and thus outdated on an annual basis. Its theoretical base is a solid one, its pragmatic learnings are however determined by the hegemonic character of the relation between...
Finally it comes together

Finally it comes together

When I was writing my thesis at the Theatre School back in 2008, I was really excited in doing research and reading more theoretical and academic work about the theories behind the use of video in art and theatre....
Facebook, towards ubiquitous computing?

Facebook, towards ubiquitous computing?

Last week an opinion piece by sociologist Ben Caudron was published in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. In it, Caudron expressed his views on the latest announcements by Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg at F8. The most interesting new changes...

You ‘like’, you pay! – Do Social Network Services Users Consciously and Willingly Give Up Their Right for Privacy?

Facebook faces more and more scrutiny over its user privacy issues, but do people willingly trade privacy as a commodity for using Social Network Services (SNSs)? Would they prefer to pay a certain fee in order to prevent surveillance...
Cyber Recruiting: The US Army on Social Media

Cyber Recruiting: The US Army on Social Media

In my first post I shared my primary interest: Governments & New Media. For this particular research, I propose to look into a very specific part of government’s new media use: recruiting for the military. As most Western countries...

Challenging Time: Google Plus and Facebook Timeline

‘The most fun thing about going out is when you run into friends unexpectedly. With Hangouts, this sort of meeting becomes possible on the internet for the first time. Let your friends know you’re available and find out who...

How Facebook made my Boyfriend Cry: About Social Networks and Worst-Case Scenarios

Last monday, just after the first lecture, I went home sick. Not that much of a problem, thank God, but I forgot to ask about the assignment at all. Luckily, Geert was so kind as to send me an...
Free labor? An attempt to determine the value of user generated content – for the user

Free labor? An attempt to determine the value of user generated content – for the user

Writings on the value of user generated content tend to stress the (market) value users produce for companies such as Facebook by adding content, labeling these activities as "free labor". Assuming that there must also be something in it...

Diverse audience consumption of social media

I love statistics. I love seeing my Facebook friend count increase. I love looking at what songs I played most in my iTunes. (Unless it is an artist that is too embarrassing to love. Luckily you can reset this...
The Future of Social Networking Sites

The Future of Social Networking Sites

First of all, let me warn you that this week's blog post is a bit more personal than my previous entries. Furthermore, I also fall victim to relating everything I write about social networking sites to Facebook, Twitter and...