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

The Anti-Googlization: How Alternative Search Engines Find Their Way on the Web

On the website googlizationofeverything.com, theorist Siva Vaidhyanathan states that the current web is dominated in several ways by search engine Google. Google related sites and ‘Googleware’ like Google Books and Google Earth and the video channel YouTube. In a...

By Desiree de Jong on 10/21/09 2

Twitter as a marketing tool

For marketers using new media strategies is becoming popular. Direct mailing is a popular tool which is already used for many years. Social networks have taken over email in terms of popularity. Twitter is a very popular one. Businesses...

By Suzanne Schram on 10/16/09 Comments Off

The Potential Power of Twitter’s Search Engine

Last week, I wrote about Twitter from the perspective of psychologist Barry Schwartz and what he calls the Paradox of Choice. “With so many options to choose from, people find it difficult to choose at all.” From this perspective...

By Sarah Moore on 10/12/09 Comments Off

Commercial twitter: or how to get a lot from a little

Almost every new media form undergoes different levels of different uses. Some new media is invented with a certain goal, take for instance a heavily used tool for communication as internet. This medium was invented in order to establish...

By Thomas Fonville on 10/11/09 Comments Off

Twitter: “Blurb 2.0”

The acceleration of communication is a product of our growing need or desire to handle larger amounts of information in shorter periods of time. As efficient as this may sound, there has been somewhat of a public outcry against...

By Thomas Wielemaker on 10/11/09 1

Twitter and The Remediation of Short Texts

Aphorisms, Haiku’s, SMS, Twitter “What are you doing?” This basic question of Twitter can easily be answered in the limited 140 characters a ‘tweet offers. They key characteristic of the famous microblogging site, it’s short message length, actually isn’t...

By Desiree de Jong on 10/11/09 Comments Off

Implications of Twitter: Crime 2.0

Sept. 30, 2008. White man about 20 years of age, wearing a blue shirt, yellow vest, safety goggle and a respirator mask. An ordinary road-worker going to work you might think. No you’re wrong, this is the story of...

By Tim van Essen on 10/11/09 Comments Off

“I’ve had the best breakfast ever” – say it using 14, 140 and 1400 symbols

Phatic communication is a term first used by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski to describe a communicative gesture that does not inform or exchange any meaningful information or facts about the world. Its purpose is a social one, to express sociability...

By Hania Piotrowska on 10/10/09 Comments Off

Twitter a New Direction for Social Media

Twitter has grown exponentially the last two years and is most apparent in the use of the service by celebrities. No other internet application can count on the massive participation of public figures. Ashton Kutcher, Al Gore, Britney Spears,...

By Albert Cornelissen on 10/10/09 Comments Off

Twitter Poetry and the Re-use Era: the Creation of Meaning

As I wrote in the last post about my new media research on Twitter, this new social networking site offers a very specific new format for communication. It gives a constraint of 140 characters to write a status update....

By Marta Colpani on 10/09/09 3

Is Twitter Gonna Kill Us?

“Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.” – Jean...

By Jelle Kamsma on 10/09/09 3

Twitter in the workplace – Communities of practice, phatic communication and knowledge sharing

Twitter is easy. When you want to start tweeting you only have to enter your e-mail address, think of a screen name and you immediately can start tweeting your every thought. You can make the choice of starting to...

By Gwen Keupe on 10/08/09 Comments Off

Twitter: Exposing the Idols

Twitter is a perfect tool for getting an insight in peoples daily lives. It encourages the following of public figures as well as “ordinary people”, who might be interesting to you. Besides the role of a follower, you also...

By Rutger van den Berg on 10/08/09 Comments Off

The significance of Twitter

Since its start in 2006 people have speculated about the significance of twitter.com/">Twitter. Twitter has often been criticized for it's lack of content, but is also praised for the empowering possibilities it offers us. I question both these...

By Kimberley Spreeuwenberg on 10/08/09 Comments Off

Twitter and the Vertical Stacking

In Politics of the Very Worst (1999) and Information Bomb (2000) Paul Virilio argues that ‘speed’ historically has been a source of power in all societies (from horsemanship, to railway transportation, naval power, flight and finally information technology). ‘Speed’...

By Simeona Petkova on 10/07/09 Comments Off

The Uses of Twitteracy

Why do I tweet?. Because I’m a narcissist?, because I want to start a revolution?, because I want to share my activities?, because I want my aphorism in the Twitter Wit book?, or simply because everyone’s doing it?. Honestly...

By Rakesh Kanhai on 10/07/09 Comments Off

Twitter and the Rise of Impersonal Communication

Before the rise of twitter there already existed older -digital- communication devices that shared the same idea: short and fast communication between people. Those were mainly writing, faxing, emailing, chatting and later sms text messaging. In the case of...

By Charlotte van Brakel on 10/07/09 2

Twitter: Public Space or Public Sphere?

Internet kills writing? According to Andrea Lunsford, researcher at the Stanford University, it is totally the other way around. There is an immense increase of people starting to write and digital writing is the biggest revolution in writing since...

By ellen sluis on 10/06/09 3

The Twitter Effect

For all those feeling nostalgic about the good old days in which search engines were not based on algorithms but actual people doing the work; your human side of the search engine is back. On Lazytweet you can ask...

By Ramses Petronia on 10/05/09 3

In search for universal language

Umberto Eco, a cultural critic, semiotician, and a writer said that we live in an age where the “diminutive, the brief and the simple are highly prized in communication” (Thurlow & Brown). New communication technologies can empower young people...

By Jan Bajec on 10/05/09 Comments Off

@MOM, twitter #addmeaning or #losemeaning?

Last week we read Vannevar Bush’s essay “As we may think” and one aspect I truly found fascinating was the purpose for what he came up with the idea of the memex: an effort to arrange a mechanism to...

By Margarida Fonseca on 10/05/09 Comments Off

“ILNY, it’s a gr8 plc”

According to the recent statistic from ITU (International Telecommunication Union), in conjunction with UN, more than half of the globe population is subscribed to mobile telephony systems. And this number competes with that of the Internet subscribers. While mobiles...

By Radmila Radojevic on 10/05/09 Comments Off

Foursquare: Are the benefits of locative social media limited to cities?

FourSquare has recently been described by bloggers as the next great micro-updating service – a geolocative platform that could compliment and even overcome Twitter. Some are even guessing that with its built-in impetus to visit local businesses, it may...

By Allison Guy on 10/05/09 1

Twitter: The Inverse Panopticon?

There’s a lot to be said about Twitter and alike, even though few have done so from a humanities perspective. Today, I would like to pose some thoughts that might inspire more new media researchers to move forward in...

By Joery Bruijntjes on 10/05/09 8