Tag Archives: democracy

Interview met Reinder Rustema: Nieuwe Media & Politiek

Floris Spronk | 25 October 2011, 10:40 am | 1 comment | tags: , , , , ,

Voor veel studenten Nieuwe Media aan de UvA is Reinder Rustema geen onbekende. Naast het doceren aan de UvA is Rustema een oudgediende op het vlak van Nieuwe Media en politiek. Zo maakte hij ooit deel uit van De Digitale Stad, schreef tientallen politieke opinieartikelen, was zelf verkiesbaar en beheert hij sites als

The Public Sphere, New Media and Politics

Daan Fliervoet | 06 October 2011, 6:00 pm | 2 comments | tags: , , , , , , , ,

According to Metareporter, a student blog for BA-student Media en Culture about new media in newspapers, a lot of articles in Dutch traditional media are about new media subjects. The top 3 tags that are being used are:  Twitter, Facebook and social media1.  This was exactly a year ago as well when I wrote by BA-thesis. These new media…

We The People: A Direct Line To The White House?

Floris Spronk | 14 September 2011, 12:01 am | 2 comments | tags: , , , , ,

The White House recently announced the development of a new platform: We The People. Obama is quoted in the introduction explaining why: “I pledged to make government more open and accountable to its citizens. That’s what the new We the People feature on WhiteHouse.gov is all about”. It is an appealing project in several ways, and especially for a New Media…

On the Political Value of TED

Bob Nefkens | 24 March 2011, 8:57 pm | 1 comment | tags: , , , ,

The Technology Entertainment and Design conference, better known as TED, has spread its worthy ideas annually since 1990. The last couple of years the TED-virus has spread the world as TED became globally known by letting their talks be viewed online for free. As a result the wide range of topics within the research and practice of science and culture of TED are also being addressed here in Amsterdam under the label of TEDx events. Its popularity seems undeniable, but what is the value of TED to us?

Tweet, Tweet, Twitter Journalism

Philip Man | 13 October 2010, 7:50 pm | 1 comment | tags: , , , ,

The role of the journalist has been changed, or some would argue that it is not there anymore. How is democracy functioning with all the social media around us? Twitter is a powerful tool for politicians to get in contact with the public, but where is the journalist?

Information Visualization and the Public Sphere

Jan Bajec | 19 May 2010, 6:55 pm | 1 comment | tags: , , , ,

Democratization of Data

Open Data is a practice (and philosophy) of making data freely available to everyone. Advocates of Open Data argue that restrictions, licenses, copyright, patents, or other mechanisms of control are against the communal good and that data should be made available without restrictions or fees. Recently, governments have been making some of their data publicly available (

Democracy of the Algorithm

Marijn de Vries Hoogerwerff | 03 November 2009, 2:27 pm | 2 comments | tags: , , ,

Working on the Society of the Query conference, I often find myself confronted with an unquestioned believe in what are believed to be the empowering or even emancipating qualities of universally accessible open and free information. Michael Stevenson once referred to this believe as Information Determinism, as if information by itself will solve social and political issues. Realizing…

Twitter: Public Space or Public Sphere?

ellen sluis | 06 October 2009, 7:51 pm | 3 comments | tags: , , , , , , ,

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 the Greek era; bigger than the shift from the oral- to the writing era. Internet improves our writing skills!

Wikipedia Edit Wars: The Web Encyclopedia as a Political Battleground

Thomas Wielemaker | 21 September 2009, 12:32 pm | tags: , , ,

The United States is a vast expanse of landscape in which millions of people hold a myriad of differing opinions. Due to its open editing policy, many of these opinions have found their way on to Wikipedia. With high internet penetration statistics and its origins in the US, Wikipedia has exploded over the last eight years. The statistics on the…

Digital Media and Democracy. “Bush Bashing in Academia”

Wouter Dijkstra | 15 September 2008, 10:36 am | tags: , , , , , , , ,

Digital Media and Democracy

Tactics in Hard Times

Edited by Megan Boler
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Structure of the book:

434 Pages/ 19 chapters/ 3 parts

Collection of essays and interviews

Different authors: Scholars, Journalist and business people.

Main question: How does the contemporary media landscape influence the democratic process?

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Summary

In this collection of essays and interviews with different media actors, contemporary corporate U.S. media is challenged by upcoming alternatives like new Media, the influence of the internet, citizen journalism and social movements. In the first part the shape of the public is sketched and a history of media in the U.S. is described. The second part deals with the changing face of new media, where the first part is narrowed down to analyze the changes in news production we see today. The third part offers us direct knowledge of how web 2.0 can be used to shape social movements and how one can use web practices and tactical media.