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

Interactivity in the Online Graphics of The New York Times and The Guardian

Almost every story a journalist writes contains the five W’s: who, what, where, why, when. However, in the last two decades the journalistic profession and it’s employer were forced to make some new transformations. These changes have been caused...

By Marije Rooze on 05/06/11 2

Truthy: Policing Misinformation, One Meme-ing Tweet At a Time

“Swiftboaters beware!” The battle to control Congress is on and this election year the truth is about to get Truthier. Twitter – the social media network, twenty-four-hour news site, conversation and blogging platform, wedding and death announcement site, gossip...

By Ekaterina Yudin on 10/18/10 2

Information visualization, going public

2010 has great potential in being the year that Information Visualization (InfoVis) went public and moved from being a term only used by enthusiasts, to an interest shared by a broader audience. I am not saying this just because...

By Margarida Fonseca on 04/19/10 2

A Question of Data/Art

A question of data/art* *delete as necessary A well known problem of data visualization is according to Lev Manovich that “people intuitively identify visualizations as infovis even though they consist not from vector elements but from media text or...

By Fenneke Mink on 05/04/11 2

What Data Visualization Can Learn from Game Design

When reading articles and books on data visualization, the focus is often on ampiflying cognition by using external (visual) aids. In this blogpost I attempt to conduct a kind of meta-analysis on data visualization by looking beyond the content...

By Philip Man on 04/19/11 2

Visualizing Scientific Research Collaboration: A Review of the Beauchesne-Map

Introduction In recent years there has been an increase in interest for international scientific collaboration (Luukkonen, 1993, Ponds, 2008), but the phenomenon is anything but recent: the first signs of it where seen in the nineteenth century (Luukkonen, 1993:...

By Sander Jansma on 04/14/11 2

Information visualization, not only an academic practice?

The definition by Card et. al. of information visualization as “the use of computer-supported, interactive, visual representations of abstract data to amplify cognition (1999),” is the basis for many. But there are also parties involved from outside the academic...

By Sander Leegwater on 04/27/10 2

Visualising music: the problems with genre classification

Want to listen to new music but sick of staring at your old MP3 collection? Streaming applications like Spotify, Last.fm and Pandora (US only) recommend related artists. Sites like The Hype Machine and Elbows aggregate music blogs for instant...

By Janice Wong on 04/26/11 1

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

How to make beautiful music (audibly & visually) without being a musician

Composing and representing music visually has traditionally been through music notation. Using a 5 lined “staff” or “stave” as a framework, black circles with lines are drawn to represent pitch and length of notes with other markings such as...

By Janice Wong on 05/10/11 1

Information Visualization & Charting The Beatles

Since I am a huge Beatles fan and I’m currently enrolled in the Information Visualization course I want to give this project some attention; Charting The Beatles, lead by graphic designer Michael Deal. This projects attempts visual analysis of...

By Maarten Hoogvliet on 05/24/10 1

The language of dynamic and interactive graphics

This blog post explores if and how the framework for the analysis of static graphics offered by Yuri Engelhardt in his PhD thesis, The language of graphics: A framework for the analysis of syntax and meaning in maps, charts...

By Lucas Reehorst on 05/27/13 1

Casual InfoViz – Beneficial or Banal?

Although most information graphics and information visualizations to date have strived to deal with vast amounts of important, albeit often unintelligible, data in new and meaningful ways in the hopes of educating or effecting change, some recent forays into...

By Thomas Wielemaker on 05/04/10 1

Big data, long data and… ephemeral data?

Currently the topic of data is mostly approached in terms of volume and temporal scope – a perspective translated in expressions such as “big data” and “long data”. Nevertheless, these terms are somehow abstract to most users and only...

By Ana Crisostomo on 03/05/13 1

Tracking a nations mood through Twitter: visualizing how you feel

There has been a shift from static to dynamic information visualization. Lately, information visualizations are being created by user generated input. Datasets can be created by scraping Twitter for certain keywords. The project “Pulse of the Nation” has visualized...

By Alex Maat on 03/20/13 1

Visualisation Aesthetics: Creative ways of visualising food and nutrition data

Communicating data can be a difficult task to embark on. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges would be to present / visualise data in a way that even viewers that are not informed or familiar with the subject visualised...

By Paola Gulian on 03/06/13 1

The Quantified Self & Big Data: causing a new turn in science?

How much time do you spend on Facebook? How many of your friends are living in Amsterdam? What is the best time to wake up in the morning? These questions are hard to answer and can take a lot...

By Serena Westra on 03/08/13 1

Twitter Research Supported by Info Visualisation

Everyday users of Twitter users provide the world with us with of tweets on topics differing from what they ate, how they feel to what music they listen to. This is a great source for researchers who want to...

By Jidi Guo on 10/07/10 1

What to do with all that big data?

“Big data will be bigger in 2013” according to the article on the website of Telegraph written on the 26th of December 2012. Even though ‘big data’ was ‘big’ in 2012, they predict that it will be bigger in...

By Jaimy Quadekker on 03/07/13 1

The Great Global Warming Swindle?

So there’s a documentary by the British Channel Four which argues that human/CO2 caused Global Warming is a pile of steaming bollocks (smells better than excrement). It can grow to become a kind of counter-Inconvenient Truth, and contribute to...

By Pepijn Uitterhoeve on 05/09/07 1

Visualizing Academic Interest

The internet has been heralded and praised for bringing democracy. It is stated since the advent of the internet that knowledge is no longer bound to limitations, as it goes freely over the web disseminating to all possible directions....

By Xander Stolwijk on 04/25/11 1

Fiona Raby Lecture Report: Designs for fragile personalities in anxious times

Room F201C of the University of Amsterdam’s Oudemanhuispoort building for an hour was the domain of Fiona Raby. She presented her ideas on design, which has close links to the design practice of Anthony Dunne, together they’re also known...

By Twan Eikelenboom on 05/11/07 1

Visualizing the ‘invisible space’

We live in a constant struggle to steer through the big and varied torrent of data which is unleashed everyday. And “data” can cover many different things. By following the Concise Lexicon for the Digital Commons created in 2001...

By Susana Zaragoza on 04/20/10 1

Analyzing Information Visualization Projects on the Topic of Economic Inequality

The current paper focuses on information visualization projects related to the topic of economic inequality which can, in this particular case, be more specifically categorized under “speculative visualization” as defined by the authors Tanyoung Kim and Carl DiSalvo in...

By Ana Crisostomo on 05/04/13 1