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

Is the internet ruining our brains?

We shouldn’t be talking about the rise of the social media and new media any more. It’s here, in everyone’s lives on a daily basis. And it’s doing things to us. It’s changing the way we communicate, learn, socialise...

By Ave Tampere on 09/09/11 Comments Off

Michael Strangelove @ Video Vortex 6: “Any Moment Will be a Youtube Moment”

In his talk on the cultural value of amateur video at the Video Vortex #6 conference in Amsterdam, the author, scholar and artist Michael Strangelove explained how amateur productions will gain greater value due to their potential of challenging...

By Caroline Goralczyk on 03/13/11 Comments Off

Dagan Cohen and Upload Cinema. Taking YouTube to the Big Screen

Upload Cinema is a monthly video spree that quite literally takes the most valuable YouTube gems to the big screen. That is, the not-so-big one of the Uitkijk, the smallest and coziest movie theater in...

By Nicola Bozzi on 03/11/11 Comments Off

Andrew Clay @ Video Vortex 6. YouTube: Make Money While Escaping Death

A media theorist and lecturer at Leicester's De Montfort University, Andrew Clay has been investigating online video for some time. As an opener of the sixth edition of Video Vortex, his intervention explored YouTube and effectively went a bit...

By Nicola Bozzi on 03/11/11 1

Twitter brings New Media student on stage with Imogen Heap

Thanks to Twitter, I (Janice Wong - cellist and New Media student at the UvA) was given a great opportunity...

By Janice Wong on 11/25/10 7

Pleasure and Desire in The Matrix

The Matrix is often used as an example of several phenomena when it comes to new media analysis. The following fragment for example, the one of the blue and red pill, is...

By Elias van Hees on 10/28/10 Comments Off

Excerpts of audiovisual astronomy

In the first systematic study about movie stardom and its heavy influence on early mass culture, Edgar Morin (1957) argues that during the golden studio-age Hollywood was able to dramatically change the ritual function of the mythical universe: by...

By Alberto Angelini on 09/29/10 Comments Off

Will Wikipedia end the disregarding of Swedish artist?

Swedish singers are often disregarded. They won’t make it out side the Swedish borders. What happened there? Did publicity fall short? Didn’t MTV pick it up? Or is there some other reason why Swedish musicians mostly don’t appear on...

By Chris Hoogeveen on 09/27/10 2

False Predictions of the Future of Social Media

Perhaps it’s my dissatisfaction with social media hypes, and especially the ones that are ignited by marketing guru’s, but I can’t resist the feeling of pseudo science when I read about analyses and predictions about social media on blogs....

By Bob Nefkens on 09/26/10 3

Youtube is going live in 3,2,1…

youtube-g" src="http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/100913-youtube-g.jpg" alt="" width="75" style="float:left"/> Would you like to watch the latest episodes of Dexter, Entourage or NCIS on your computer without having to search all sorts of obscure websites? Without the piracy-issue pricking your...

By Levien Rocha on 09/13/10 2

A video game’s tale

The video game industry has come a long way lately; what with the recent example of Sony Playstation celebrating 15 years and announcing the debut of their new smart multimedia console. A device that is clearly competitive to Nintendo Wii,...

By Ourania on 09/12/10 Comments Off

YouTube, please give me an iTunes link!

YouTube does not endorse infringement of copyright. But with so many newly uploaded videos per day, YouTube has had to come up with alternatives to terminating the accounts of every poor 14 year old who decides to make a...

By Janice Wong on 09/09/10 9

Using Twitter To Support 3FM’s ‘Serious Request’ Campaign

Using Facebook, Youtube, Hyves and Twitter in particular for the good cause? It's possible in the coming weeks with Serious Retweets. The site www.seriousretweets.nl supports the yearly 3FM campaign 'Het glazen huis'...

By Elias van Hees on 09/07/10 Comments Off

A story about YouTube’s googlization and the hidden community

<p style=”text-align: justify;”>“From You to Tube: YouTube’s googlization and the hidden community” is a short video created by Lasse Timmermann and me for the Digital Methods Seminar. It follows the conceptual and methodological framework of “distilling the ‘textual grammar’...

By Simeona Petkova on 11/20/09 1

VideoSongs: a Cottage (Remix Culture) Industry

The YouTube account stats under my profile badge now boast over 13,000 videos watched, but besides the occasional surfing squirrel, dramatic chipmunk (technically a prairie dog) or Dawkins diatribe, I spend most of my time on YouTube listening to...

By Thomas Wielemaker on 11/05/09 Comments Off

Contesting our Cultural Heritage

There has always been fear towards new technologies that create new ways of recording and sharing cultural products. The videotape made owners of these products extremely nervous, because it allowed viewers stay at home to record and share what...

By Albert Cornelissen on 10/30/09 Comments Off

How Can Artists Use Social Networks?

Artists and the Ontological Web “As an artist I find that social networking technology is ontological.” -Andres Manniste on Nettime, March 2008. As we use the web we construct a portrait of ourselves over time: what sites we return to,...

By Morgan Currie on 09/28/09 3

Book Review of YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture

Show off your favorite videos to the world. Take videos of your dogs, cats, and other pets. Blog the videos you take with your digital camera or cell phone. Securely and privately show your videos to your friends and...

By Tim van Essen on 09/17/09 10

Review of Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright – Lucas Hilderbrand

In his latest book: Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape (2009) Lucas Hilderbrand explores the analog past of video nostalgically, and shows its importance and relevance to (new) media studies. Hilderbrand mainly focuses on the aesthetic, cultural and legal...

By Marc Stumpel on 09/13/09 Comments Off

YouParticipate: the politics of YouTube’s flagging system

My thesis is about a seemingly small detail of YouTube’s interface, the ‘flag’ button. I got intrigued by this function because of the politics that are at play behind it, hence the title “YouPartipate: the politics of YouTube’s flagging...

By Minke Kampman on 09/04/09 4

Possibilities and threats for popstars in Web 2.0

Popstars have an economic function, like filmstars. They promise a performance. They are the profit makers of the entertainment industries. From an ideological point of view, popstars maintain a myth of meritocracy. The industries and the stars themselves want...

By Arno de Natris on 09/02/09 1

Moving Movie Industry Conference

Introduction Friday October 31 the –free- Moving Movie Industry Conference organized by the Stifo@Sandberg took place at the theater in the Public Library in Amsterdam. It was a full days program with different speakers around the theme of how...

By Paulien Dresscher on 11/01/08 10

POLITICS: WEB 2.0 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Written for the Institute of Network Cultures Crossposted at Institute of Network Cultures Weblog Download PDF (full text including pictures) On April 17th and 18th 2008 the department of Politics and International Relations at the Royal Holloway University of...

By Roman Tol on 05/13/08 1

Video Vortex: Thomas Elsaesser on ‘Constructive Instability’

'Constructive instability' is how Condoleeza Rice described the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict in the summer of 2006. It's a term that brings to mind tropes of globalization - maybe a synonym of precarity, or the state that produces a desire for...

By Michael Stevenson on 01/19/08 4