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

Can we “unplug online”? The Paradox of Meditation Apps and Mindfulness

In our digitized world, people long more and more for taking a step back from social media and the overload of information to focus on their ‘inner self’ and guess what – there’s an app for that! Using...

By Annika Heinemeyer on 09/23/18 Comments Off

Mediating Veganism: A look at vegan self-presentation on Instagram

Veganism is an alternative food diet and lifestyle that aims to exclude, as far as possible any exploitation and cruelty to animals for food, clothing, or other by-products (The Vegan Society). A cursory search on Google Trends reveals that...

By Amber de Zeeuw on 10/25/17 Comments Off

Snapchat Fams as a Subculture: How Influencers Use Emojis for Commodifying Cross-Platform Engagement

Introduction Communities on social media are an emerging phenomenon in today’s society. Within the framework of networks, people come together virtually, satisfying their needs of communication and belonging, usually by creating communities based on mutual interests. Often, these communities...

By Nefeli Gkoni on 10/25/17 Comments Off

Instagram bots in the debate of free labor

In the recent years there has been a growing trend of Instagram bots creating accounts, liking content and posting comments on Instagram. For a cheap price, these bots are offered as a service, by sites such as Gramista to...

By Edo Druiventak on 09/25/17 Comments Off

The fake fame – Black market on social media

Sitting on a Saturday morning at my desk, it took me ten seconds to find a website which wanted to sell me 2,500 ‘quality Instagram followers’ to boost my account for the price of about 25€. The website claims...

By Mandy Theel on 09/24/17 Comments Off

#CopyPaste – The battle between Instagram and Snapchat

There is a battle going on between Instagram and Snapchat.. but who is on the winning hand? A-team Instagram is a mobile phone photo-sharing, video-sharing and social network service. It enables users to take pictures and videos and...

By Arabella Memdouh on 09/21/16 Comments Off

Prisma: The Photo App With Its Own Charisma!

All the Instagram addicts must have already tried out or, at least, come across with artsy photos badged with the #prisma hashtag. For those of you who (strangely enough) haven’t seen or heard of it before, Prisma is...

By Christina Panteli on 09/19/16 Comments Off

FemInstagram: can Instagram help fight sexism?

Lena Dunham, Feminista Jones, Anna Gensler, Rupi Kaur are only a few of the many social media activists, involved in the debate on feminist issues, but all of them report having been victims of cyber-bullying in one way or another. Besides...

By Emilija Jokubauskaite on 09/19/16 Comments Off

Why Instagram finally lets us think outside of the box

Ever since it’s rise to fame, Instagram has been known for its square pictures. But with a recent new update the platform finally lets its users break free from that restriction. To make “telling our visual story easier and...

By Milan van Vugt on 09/17/15 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

“Buy buttons”: Is this the new shopping mecca?

If you just rewind back to the past, freeze your memory in the ‘90s and try to recall the retail websites of this era, it will be obvious how boring and indifferent purchases could be. But it was time...

By Christina Giannouli Kyrimi on 09/15/15 Comments Off

The perfect bell pepper: from sheet film to Instagram

Some eleven or twelve years ago, I went to one of the many Turkish or Moroccan grocery stores in Amsterdam to buy a bell pepper. For the sixteenth time in a couple of weeks. I tried to find the...

By Jan-Jaap Heine on 09/09/14 Comments Off

On the Nature and Culture of Photography

The praxis and technology of photography has seen dramatic transformations over the last century. The most obvious transformations taking place in the last decade of the 20th century, marking the shift from analog to digital photography. Yet another shift...

By Martijn Dorresteijn on 11/02/11 4

Instagram lets us discover our hidden talents

Fortunately or not, I am not a smartphone user and I hardly play with applications different than alarm watch and calculator on my very old school Nokia. Believe me or not, they work and they do their job! Sometimes...

By Natalia Miszczak on 10/10/11 1