Syria: Cracking down on digital dissidents
For Syrian dissidents, social networking sites are essential for bypassing traditional media and communication channels. But in doing so, online activists might all too easily fall prey to the government’s digital surveillance. Social networking services like Facebook, Twitter and...
Obama vs. Romney: analyzing the image of the future First Lady
The predicted outcome of the upcoming 2012 U.S. presidential elections is still very much subject to fluctuation. Polls are still changing on a daily basis, with the difference between predicted votes for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney only a...
Memeification of the News
Internet memes (specifically image memes) have taken the role of a media format for civic journalism, ever evolving and reproducing cultural/political concerns which reflect our social condition. As an amalgamated entity, memes are constantly integrating themselves within social platforms...
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...
NIMk: Yes, they’re still open!
Before closing its doors for good at the end of this year, the Netherlands Media Art Institute dedicates an exhibition to one of the key terms in online culture: openness. Getting lost is one of the annoying, yet inevitable...
Yes we can – the use of social media by Dutch politicians during electorial campaigns in 2012
During their campaign for the 2002 Dutch elections, politicians were mainly using blogs as a mechanism to advocate their ideas on the Internet. In 2006 podcasting and postings on the Dutch Facebook equivalent “Hyves” were added as additional ways...
you will _KNOW how_ : interview with Nancy Mauro-Flude
I first encountered the work of Tasmanian performance artist and media researcher Nancy Mauro-Flude during The Art of Hacking exhibition opening at the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk) on September 9, 2011. Mauro-Flude’s Error_in_Time(V.T_3), a poetic coding performance featuring...
Avaaz.org: Click for Change
These are harsh times. There’s an economical crisis and a climate crisis. There’s drought in the Horn of Africa and flooding in Thailand, chaos in Libya and war in Afghanistan, protests on Wall Street and censorship in China. If...
Interview met Reinder Rustema: Nieuwe Media & Politiek
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...
Russian Classmates, politics and Georgia
Despite having over 100 friends and former classmates in my friends list on a popular Russian social networking site Odnoklassniki.ru, I left it following a brief Russian-Georgian war in August 2008 and joined an increasing number of people in...
What Juliet Didn’t Ask
Deepening the Motivations and Consequences of Facebook Aliases I was a freshman in college when Facebook was fresh off the server. The social network’s inaugural class has since grown up, and so has its Facebook identity. An established social...
Thank You, Louis!
Instead of writing about my Wikipedia entry, which was quickly accepted, as it was about such a marginal and unimportant topic that it could not be ‘biased,’ i.e. nobody cared, I would rather ventilate my frustrations caused by a...
We The People: A Direct Line To The White House?
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...
‘Headdesking’ and Beyond: The British Uprisings
‘Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not...
Not About Media!
The Impossibility of Media Theory Where previous generations of Serious Men saw in the concept of Medium but marginal or esoteric wordplay, we in our times seem to attribute to it almost magical qualities, such as the 19th century...
On the Political Value of TED
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...
TOP: Climategate IPCC and the legitimacy of public concerns
In this session we focus on the contemporary connections between science, technology, and politics. The connections between these three domains are often neglected or unjust presented as complete seperated area’s. Bruno Latour speaks of matters that matter, by which...
Book Review – Open 20: The Populist Imagination
The Populist Imagination comes in a timely moment. The 20th issue of Open, the cahier on art and the public domain published by NAi, is a collection of essays dealing with “the role of myth, narratives and identity in...
Economies of the Commons 2: Death Knell for Open Politics
Open source, open government, open culture - as Nate Tkacz, PhD at the University of Melbourne points out in his talk at the Economies of the Commons Conference, the ubiquity of 'openness' as a master category of politics in...
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...
Tweet Me Some Revolution
Create the change, become a Twitizen, fight injustice and eff the system. Revolution here and revolution there. Everywhere we hear about how social media and micro-blogging has brought about a tremendous change in the organization of social movements and...
Bookreview: Communication Power
Where lies the power in network society? That’s the question Manuel Castells tries to answer in his book ‘Communication Power’. An interesting and relevant question considering our changing society. According to Castells, power relationships operate in networks. In his...