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

Bang With Friends – are the ‘hook up’ sites the future of dating?

By Annika Kuyper and Jakub Dutka Bang With Friends is a casual sex app, launched in January 2013. How does it work? It is dead simple. The app connects to your Facebook account and downloads your friends list. Subsequently,...

By Jakub Dutka on 10/07/13 Comments Off

Flipboard: the tasteful social curation

News consumption has somehow taken a different path since the development of RSS feed, but how is it different? And why? Let’s look at this fairly recent application, Flipboard, to answer those questions. Flipboard is a free social...

By V Weydert on 10/07/13 Comments Off

Global Internet Censorship – ACTA

The internet as we know is a place with limitless accessibility and constant access to all shareable online information within an open exchange where media exist and co-exist in the way of informing and entertaining. It also means to...

By Christoph Rauch on 09/13/13 1

Creating at Create-IT

Doing an academic research for applied science can be quite awesome! Imagine that you do an academic research project and someone is interested in translating it to applied science and actually work it out. What you have written behind...

By Annika Kuijper on 09/12/13 Comments Off

MOOCs: nothing more than the latest craze… or are they?

“Big breakthroughs happen when what is suddenly possible meets what is desperately necessary.” – Thomas L. Friedman (May 15, 2012) 2012 was a year of many events and breakthroughs. The global economic crisis continued to be pervasive, the release...

By Rebecca Cachia on 09/10/13 Comments Off

Remediation in Grand Theft Auto

Remediation is definitely one of those well-known concepts that new media scholars can discuss about for hours. According to Bolter and Grusin, remediation is the representation of ‘old’ media in new media. Characteristics of television and radio, for instance,...

By Wessel Schillemans on 09/09/13 Comments Off

IT IS NOT JUST A GAME

It was not far ago when in order for you to have a video game experience you had to purchase a game package which included a DVD and instructions. Nowadays, with the evolution of the internet, games are bought...

By Alexandros Valarakis on 09/09/13 1

From Coin to Movie Ticket: the changed currency in the gaming industry

Amazing voice-acting, a great and mature storyline, emotional depth and solid directing while keeping the action tense and gripping. Judging from this praise above many would be inclined to say the subject matter here is a big budget Hollywood...

By Vincent Sloof on 09/08/13 Comments Off

Social network is aging. What’s next?

We’re hopelessly addicted to social platforms as if it would be still revolutionary in our lives but is anyone thinking about it to be aging? People start getting bored with social networks because it does change in the way...

By Indre Lauciute on 09/08/13 Comments Off

Social media in Iraq: in search of the truth

Like elsewhere in the Middle East, in Iraq social media is a fast growing way of communication. Contrary to the situation ten years ago, the use of mobile phone is nowadays nearly universal. Internet cafes are booming and the...

By Wieneke Vucht van on 10/18/12 Comments Off

Wanted: skilled volunteers to change the world

New media has been offering many possibilities for non-profit and social enterprises to find volunteers online, but an initiative called Catchafire is taking the center of attentions within the web. The purpose of the website is simple: provide a...

By Juliana Marques on 10/14/12 Comments Off

App Review: Pulse. Re-imagining the news

By: Juliana Marques and Sonia Kolasinska Tired of checking many news websites every morning to get the full overview of what’s going on? Pulse is the solution. With the help of this app it’s a piece of cake to gather posts...

By Sonia Kolasinska on 10/01/12 1

Mash-up trailers and YouTube: “birth” of a new media object

You have probably already seen them and maybe you have not even noticed them. Some people describe them as ‘trash’, as ‘gosh awful bad’, as ‘YouTube spam’, and others might describe them as ‘(amateur) art’. A more neutral way...

By Charly Landman on 09/13/12 2

A New Media Advertising Solution for a Classic Brand: Mercedes-Benz Romania

There’s Mercedes-Benz and there are other cars. I’ve always been an admirer of the German super-brand, not only for its outstanding four-wheeled pieces of art, but also for having a spectacular history and the power to constantly re-invent itself....

By Alex Manole on 09/10/12 Comments Off

The propaganda model in a contemporary media landscape – The case of BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS!*

This February I attended a movie screening at a small cinema in central Gothenburg in Sweden. The movie shown was BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS!* (2012) by Swedish director Fredrik Gertten. This film is a true and thrilling story that...

By Lisa Bergenfelz on 09/08/12 Comments Off

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...

By Bozhan Chipev on 09/08/12 1

Edial Dekker, CEO of Gidsy: from hacking to collaborative consumption

In yesterday’s class we discussed the development of free software and open source. A major shift has been taking place, albeit in a slow pace, from proprietary software to a more open and free form. This change is described...

By Bree Tahapary on 11/04/11 Comments Off

Netexplorateur Observatory. Talking about Crowdmash, VirtuRéalité and Webego…

Tuesday 25th of October I went to see a conference in Brussels of The Netexplorateur Observatory at Institut des Hautes Etudes des Communications Sociales (IHECS). This observatory is formed of sociologists that analyse hundreds of innovation in the area...

By Aurelie Ghalim on 11/02/11 Comments Off