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

Chatroulette, no longer The Ultimate Online Experience?

In a previous post called; NEXT!Chatroulette; a shuffle through genital exposure and musicality I went a head and proclaimed Chatroulette to be an ultimate online experience, allowing visitors utter anonymity and random shuffles between users. Yet recently I returned to...

By ibtisam omer on 10/27/10 3

Facebook cares about our heartbreak?

Facebook has declared that they will stop showing your ex’s in the Photo Memories box (occasionally on the top right box, where the adds usually are). In practice this means that they’ve created an algorithm which won’t show tagged...

By Cendy Calis on 10/26/10 2

Is it really all that bad?

A recent Vancouver Sun article about the documentary Catfish, brings up an arguable and in vogue topic. One that commonly seems to be brought up quiet often about the rising popularity of social media platforms: What are the (psychological) dynamics between the...

By Agathe Wiedemair on 10/25/10 Comments Off

The Threefold Digital Divide

The Digital Divide The common gap in internet accessibility is mainly based on socioeconomic status, determined by skills and resources. The digital divide has often emerged along the familiar fault lines of social inequality: class, ethnicity, gender, age, and...

By Pim van Bree on 10/20/10 1

The divine act of Video Sharing on Facebook

Share it, enjoy it and post another one. One of the most ideal moments in the day of an admin social networker as myself, is the regular discovery of a good, short and entertaining video clip. This particular discovery is...

By ibtisam omer on 10/09/10 2

Facebook Launches Three Key Features To Protect Privacy

It seems that Mark Zuckerberg has listened to all the nagging about how Facebook is violating the privacy of their users. On the live press-conference of Facebook yesterday, Zuckerberg announced a few features that the social networking site will...

By Philip Man on 10/07/10 Comments Off

The Social Network film coming soon to a cinema near you…or a laptop screen

The film The Social Network was directed by West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, and David Fincher recognized producer of films such as Fight Club and Panic Room. The two men set out to make a film reflecting the establishment...

By ibtisam omer on 10/07/10 Comments Off

Californian Ideology 2.0, A First Farewell

Where the internet and greater new technologies before have military origin, nowadays technologies and implementation are developed and financed by private companies and organizations. Even the backbone of the internet has become privatized, as part of its protocol, DNS,...

By Pim van Bree on 10/05/10 1

Adopted Teen Traced on Social Network

A great example of how the privacy issues we face on social networks are not just limited to our data being sold to marketers. This BBC interview tells how a British girl was traced by her natural sister on...

By Natalie Dixon on 09/29/10 Comments Off

Not to get too emotional… but what happened to emotion?

She' ll smile to you if you move to the left. No, try a different angle. I don't know... Is she smiling at all? For over 500 years, viewers and researchers have been trying to interpret Mona Lisa's...

By Ilektra Pavlaki on 09/28/10 Comments Off

Online Activism, Offline Passivism?

Social media and Web 2.0 have radically changed the way we communicate with each other. Blogs and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter let us...

By Fei An Tjan on 09/28/10 Comments Off

Researching online music networking in the Web 2.0 era: Soundcloud and the demise of MySpace

With the current steady rise of social networking sites, it is by all means an important question to ask how to research these in the field of new media studies. Furthermore, a lot of these sites offer services destined...

By Hans Terpstra on 09/28/10 Comments Off

Yeey I’m on Facebook! :s

With 500 million active users spending over 700 billion minutes per month, Facebook is gaining more and more traffic each single day. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest country in the world. With these...

By Laila Koubia on 09/27/10 Comments Off

MIN(D)ING Your Data

Last week, ‘surveillance and control’ was the theme the Masters of Media-students were debating about. Theorists as Michel Foucault, Deleuze, Galloway and Thacker and Chun passed the revue. With the articles of the last three theorist there was some...

By Xander Stolwijk on 09/27/10 Comments Off

Be free. Don’t adjust your Facebook privacy settings

Chun states that we, the users, perceive new media, in particular the Internet, to be free, democratic and save. We think we are in control of our content, but just like with other technologies, we can never have total...

By Emina Sendijarevic on 09/27/10 1

Facebook Confessions: Pastoral Power in New Media Practices

Facebook, as a tool to connect, communicate, share, link, network and socialize, has become omnipresent in the Internet landscape. Its history starts in 2004, when Mark Zuckerberg launched the network at Harvard University. It has since reached over 500 million...

By Agathe Wiedemair on 09/27/10 1

Virtually Yours! The Meteoric Rise of Virtual Game Goods

In the space of just over a decade, virtual game goods have gone from being a black market cottage industry to an extremely successful business model for gaming and social networking virtual goods industries. This evolution, caused by player...

By Isobel Gorman on 09/27/10 1

Thou shall not lie (on your online profile)

(Untrustworthy) Online Identities in Web 2.0 The example of Facebook As new media history is being written at present time, the discourse keeps revolving around the notion of online identity and “personal privacy” issues that are connected to the...

By Ourania on 09/27/10 1

Social Networks and Multicultural Societies

After the web crash in the 90’s a new way of thinking about the internet arose. This lead to a brand new composition of the internet, often referred to as web 2.0. The term does not refer to any...

By Marte Lindstrom on 09/26/10 Comments Off

Does Facebook Rule? Ideas For The Future.

Facebook is everywhere. It connects 500 millions of people around the world. No doubts, it is an effect of purposeful endeavours of those who stay behind the success of the platform. It is becoming more and more interconnected into...

By Michal Kielbasa on 09/26/10 Comments Off

Y this Generation?

To start understanding social networks and their ceaseless popularity it’s important to understand the people who use them most. Although it’s a mistake to generalize about an entire generation there are unquestionably some central themes that apply to Generation...

By Natalie Dixon on 09/26/10 Comments Off