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

How Can Art Be Subversive in a Platform System? The Case of Benjamin Grosser

What would happen if one morning, a morning like many others, after you got up, you discovered that your Facebook home page is completely empty, without any type of content? I’m not talking about a crash or...

By Tommaso Campagna on 09/24/18 Comments Off

Mission Control: The changing boundaries of control and ownership in the world’s biggest crowd funding success.

The latest controversy surrounding the in development game Star Citizen, struck me as illustrative of the pitfalls and complexities of new forms of financing, and how they manifest the sunk cost fallacy in new, unexpected ways. It isn’t just...

By Tim Groot on 09/24/18 Comments Off

Can a new App save Democracy?

According to recent opinion polls, most Europeans do not trust their politicians. Nor do they believe that their voice actually counts (European Commission 14-19). In the last years, citizens expressed their dissatisfaction at the ballot box, as the frightening...

By Taylan Engin on 09/19/16 Comments Off

rMA Thesis Conference 2015: (pre)Cyberspace Perspectives on Information Technologies

The following is a modified transcript of my research presentation for the 2015 Research Master in Media Studies Thesis Conference. My thesis is an exploration of magical writing practices in contemporary digital culture. This was too much to talk...

By Rose Rowson on 05/05/15 Comments Off

Ice Bucket Challenge: Entering a new era of viral fundraising

Approximately two months ago, another viral phenomenon started taking over the Internet: The Ice Bucket Challenge. While everybody should applaud the charitable motive behind it, I was tired of seeing foolish narcissists pouring ice water over their head and posting a video...

By Miles Zornig on 09/11/14 Comments Off

Smart phones and Digital Inclusion in the developing world

The Digital Divide is a socio-economic inequality defined by ones access, use or knowledge of Internet and Communications Technology. This can be defined within a country or on a global scale. The later shows that ICT has developed unevenly...

By Evelien Christiaanse on 09/09/14 Comments Off

Tangible Data Visualizations

We live in a world of three dimensions (alright 4, and a spattering of more depending on which school of quantum theory you adhere to). However, when it comes to visualizing data, the results are surprisingly 2-dimensional, and mostly...

By Philip Anderson on 04/22/14 1

8tracks and web-radios: the contemporary music consumption is personal and social

Since the growth of the Internet and its collection of interactive platforms and social networks, the cultural industry has turned a critical corner. This statement is especially true for the music industry in term of music creation and consumption,...

By V Weydert on 10/31/13 Comments Off

We Are Dread: A Review of the Dread Exhibition at De Hallen, Haarlem

By Lani Shadduck & Lucy Chinen “Dread trembles in my pocket. Dread chirps incessantly. Dread flashes and bounces. Dread summons me a hundred times a day to pay attention to my phone or my laptop, and stiffening...

By Lani Shadduck on 10/09/13 Comments Off

Watch Me If You Can (1 of 3): Anonymous and Secure Browsing

This is the first post in a short series on how to remain secure and anonymous online. Part one will cover internet browsing, part two will cover communicating online, and part three will cover file transferring and downloading. Parts...

By Philip Anderson on 09/13/13 Comments Off

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...

By Mathias Schuh on 10/05/12 2

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

Organization as a popular text?

What exactly are the major differences between a fan culture participating around a popular text on the one hand, and fan cultures based around brands or organizations on the other hand? This question I was studying in my Thesis...

By Basri Hoogstrate on 09/09/12 Comments Off

The Professionalization of the Modding Culture

In the digital media landscape new opportunities arise for active users and growing communities. As a active user of media you have the possibilities to use, modify and produce media. According to Henry Jenkins new media technologies have profoundly...

By Ferdy Looijen on 09/09/12 5

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...

By Richard Zimerman on 09/09/12 1

The Switch: from Matthew Fuller to mobile apps

Erupting Irruption Ask Elk Grove, launched ten days ago for the city of Elk Grove, California, numbers among the newest localized smartphone applications for reporting civic repairs. Most follow agendas similar to GRCity311, an app developed for Grand Rapids,...

By Kendall Grady on 10/10/11 2

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...

By Yeun Au on 10/04/11 Comments Off

Book Review: Crowdsourcing, How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe.

What do YouTube, Wikipedia, IMDB, Tripadvisor, Linux, iStockphoto and Firefox all have in common? They exist through the collective efforts of millions of ordinary users like you and me. The strategy behind the success of these websites is crowdsourcing:...

By Leander Roet on 09/18/11 1

Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Media So Different, So Appealing?

As any illustrator should be, I am obsessed by visual culture, art, design and media. The way contemporary creative conception and expression takes on new shapes and forms, catapulted through the fibre-optic network and available for all to consume,...

By Martijn Dorresteijn on 09/15/11 Comments Off

Master New Media; a logical choice.

The first week at the Master New Media was interesting and it gave a good view of what we will do in the upcoming year. It is nice to see that the classes consist of so many students from...

By Daan Fliervoet on 09/15/11 Comments Off

The revolutionary potential of Wikipedia’s equipotential paradigm.

This is part of the final paper I submitted for the course “Culture of Spectacle” As shown in the previous post, the “anyone can edit” philosophy of Wikipedia is often viewed with great skepticism in academic circles, while its...

By Ilektra Pavlaki on 06/19/11 Comments Off

Knowledge, not the way you knew it: Studying the impact of Wikipedia on the reception of knowledge

This is part of the final paper I submitted for the course “Culture of Spectacle” 17.000.000 articles. 91.000 active contributors. 270 languages. No matter what words one would choose to describe Wikipedia, numbers cannot speak but the truth: Wikipedia,...

By Ilektra Pavlaki on 06/13/11 1

The lessons that “teaching” taught me: Following the campaign for the development of the Greek-language Wikipedia, Part II

The truth is that one needs all the support that can get when is called to present an online encyclopedia in front of the so – called Net Gen or Generation Y. I wouldn’t dare to count myself a...

By Ilektra Pavlaki on 05/19/11 Comments Off

I am a Wikipedian

This week I posted a Wiki post on the Dutch Wikipedia website about the subject of my interest Digitized Cultural Heritage. Nothing fancy, just a small posting with some definitions and examples followed by a few links. After carefully...

By Fenneke Mink on 10/03/10 Comments Off