Masters of Media

Abstract Digital Spatial (Infra)structures: Shaping Possibilities of Migrant Movement Through Data Collection Methods, Audiovisual Surveillance, and Structural Mapping

Keywords – digital immigration methods ■ refugee ■ migrants ■ asylum ■ data collection ■ spatial surveillance ■ architectures of displacement ■ mapping technologies ■ Automated (Spatial) Learning Systems Introduction: Abstract Digital Space as Reductive Space: Data Collection of...

By Megan Phipps on 09/02/21 0

Call for Applications – MA in New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam

One-year and two-year international Master’s programs in New Media available: MA Media Studies: New Media and Digital Culture (one year, full time) Research MA Media Studies: New Media and Digital Culture (two years, full time) MA New Media and...

By Esther Weltevrede on 11/19/20 0

MOM Over Time: A meta-analysis

Introduction MOM, a weblog belonging to the students and professors of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam, has been online for about fifteen years now. Master of Media blog (MOM), is about new media phenomena and digital culture...

By Sagar Hugar on 10/24/19 0

The digital “gig economy”: empowering or constricting freelancers?

In the last decade sharing economy led to the blossoming of digital platforms that facilitate connections between clients and service providers. New companies managed to enter established industries and they didn’t do it quietly. Their approach is redefining actors,...

By on 09/23/19 0

Surfing on the free trial wave – New app cancels free trials by the end of subscription period.

A new feature within the DoNotPay app launched this September and promises to cancel free trials before they run out and cost customers a lot of money. In a world in which streaming- and subscription services have become part...

By Laura Schäfer on 09/23/19 0

Neurchi d’algorithmes

In 2017 Mark Zuckerberg decided that he wanted to help Nigerian women and reinvigorate Facebook’s business model. Somehow it triggered a renaissance in French memes.

By on 09/22/19 0

Are you watching Netflix (or is it watching you)?

Bandersnatch (2018), is the first release of an interactive film for adults on a platform (Netflix) where the viewers make decisions for the main character, taking control of the storyline. The question is: do we really monitor the characters’...

By on 09/22/19 0

Cross media learning: from a book to an online tribe – Miracle Morning

How the book “Miracle Morning” can be the driver of a social movement on the web 2.0? Prosumers are combining traditional and new medias to foster innovative ways of learning. Welcome to our online tribe!

By on 09/22/19 0

Disruptive CGI and Digital Aesthetics: Counter-culture, Counter-corporate, and Corporeal Examinations in Experimental Digital Art

Abstract This paper contributes a digital-aesthetics approach to relevant new media discourse topics concerning the market, power and control, and identity formation by way of discussing the phenomenon of computer-generated imagery (CGI). Specifically, I will examine experimental digital artists...

By Megan Phipps on 09/02/21 0

Is Evgeny Morozov’s The Syllabus the real Google antidote?

In the autumn of 2019, technology critic and writer Evgeny Morozov launched the online information-service “The Syllabus”: a curated expert guide to the digital public sphere, containing a constantly updated selection of books, academic articles, podcasts and videos on...

By Sara Getz on 12/08/20 0

Coding queer bias: An artist’s response to the lack of diversity in machine learning

Machine learning technology is known not only to reinforce but even deepen social bias, consequently fostering discrimination and oppressing diversity in multiple ways. Counterintuitively, in “Zizi – Queering the Dataset”, the artist Jake Elwes shows how machine learning can...

By on 12/04/20 0

Deepfake Atmospheres and Digital Crowds

It has not been a good year for crowds. Around the globe, concert halls are silent; stadia, empty. The decibel level of humanity is very likely at a century low. Throughout the world televised sports—a commercial enterprise for whom...

By on 12/04/20 0

PERSONALIZED JOURNALISM: THE USE OF CHATBOTS BY RUSSIAN MEDIA

The Internet is not a vending machine in which you throw a coin and then get what you want (Lovink, 2018). But what if it is? One of the trends that appeared in late 2015 was the development of...

By on 12/03/20 0

Body positivity on the Instagram

The human psyche is shaped by the influence from the society, its cultural influence. There is a strong cultural connection between perfect body weight, “thin ideal’ to a definition of female beauty. This blog post purpose is to show...

By on 11/22/20 0

Public Safety in the Year of Unprecedented Times: An Intervention on Government Sanctioned Covid-19 Data Visualization

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread globally, most governments have launched national ‘corona dashboards’ via public health organisations on which they keep track of the (rising) case numbers and attempt to visualize the spread of the virus in...

By on 10/21/20 0

Nazi Furs F*ck Off: Reclaiming online spaces in the age of political fandom

Culture wars never change. Nazifur metapolitics VS queer furry hegemony. Who will win? Not the fascists.

By Marcantonio Bracale Syrnikov on 10/21/20 0

One Magic Leap For Mankind: Is this visual platform the magic bullet to remote learning?

The pedagogical shift from classrooms to chatrooms, exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic, has changed education—for better and worse. This blog post seeks to explore some of these issues and how Magic Leap 1, which is a wearable head-mounted AR...

By Paul Bugeja on 10/21/20 0

“Stop licking the boots and start marching them” – An exploratory research proposal into peer-to-peer political discussion on TikTok

by: Samuel Vitikainen, Max Buzzell, Loulou de Regt, Lotte Timmermans For people over 24, and some people under 24 too, TikTok constitutes a phenomenon as alien as Narnia: a strange world where the rules are difficult to understand. To...

By Max Buzzell on 10/21/20 0

Conspiracy theories in the digital world – How does the digital language surrounding QAnon conspiracy theories differ on platforms such as Twitter and Reddit through the lens of “Face” and “Mask” culture?

Authors: Christian R. , Doortje N., Lara., Sara N. Conspiracy theories are in no way something new and have, in fact, already been circulating and believed for a long time, some of the most famous examples being the conspiracy...

By Lara R. on 10/21/20 0

Artland: A platform-analysis on the democratization of the art world fostered by an online art market

In a more and more digitalized world and with the rise of COVID-19, cultural institutions like galleries and museums have been constrained to explore alternative digital areas, and so does the art market. But how does this digitalization of...

By on 10/21/20 0

Feminist Movements in the Age of Social Media: Crossing the Thin Line Between Authentic and Performative Activism

By Irem Ergul, Emma Fuchsová, Alexandra Hagedorn 1. Introduction Activism is conventionally seen as a form of public protest, that is a rally, public meeting or a march (Anderson and Herr 20). In this day and age, however, activism...

By Alexandra Hagedorn on 10/21/20 0

BETWEEN ZOOM-MEETINGS AND SKYPE CALLS: HOW VIDEO CONFERENCING HAS BECOME THE SOCIAL GLUE OF A PANDEMIC

Communication has changed dramatically since COVID-19 spread. Many countries have adopted different degrees of quarantine and remote work is on the rise. Social contact has been dramatically shortened. In the following lines, a discussion will be developed on the...

By Sandy Rafaela Krambeck on 10/21/20 0

GIF me a Fan: An analysis on fan-group creative collective culture through the use of GIFs

By Dania Elahi, Lisa Lan, Nahal Sheikh Introduction Who doesn’t love GIFs? There is something magical about this looping animation clip that grabs our attention and makes us all addicted. This visual communication tool has become the ubiquitous visual...

By on 10/21/20 0

Unearthing Spotify: the hidden world behind everyday plays

Do you listen to music every day? Do you remember how you listened to music a few years ago? Facing the collapsed traditional music industry, Spotify is the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service, with almost 300 million...

By on 10/21/20 0

Can you change the world with a homemade DeepFake?

Kenza Sabri (kenzasabri5@gmail.com) Zuzanna Kędzia (zuzanna.k0987@gmail.com) Daria Kochetkova (daria.kochetkova.08@gmail.com) “At the most basic level, deepfakes are lies disguised to look like truth. If we take them as truth or evidence, we can easily make false conclusions with potentially disastrous...

By Kenza Sabri on 10/21/20 0

Zoom-ing in on Online Education: Digital Infrastructure as an Extension

The year 2020 has brought about significant change in almost all areas of life as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. Video conferencing services, such as Zoom, have become a perceived replacement for workspaces, social interaction environments, and even...

By on 10/20/20 0

From art to ethical design; Studio Roosegaarde’s quest for a sustainable and aesthetic future

The clock is ticking: sea levels and temperatures are rising, plastic is building up, and animals face extinction. What if art can be the activator for change?

By Victor Loye on 10/20/20 0

Contact tracing: an aid for humanity or a Trojan horse of surveillance?

By Sophie Letschert (smwletschert@outlook.com), Caroline Stanislawczyk (claarecaro@gmail.com) and Karlygash Nurdilda (k.nurdilda@gmail.com) Introduction Can contact tracing apps become the ultimate flooding gates for private data to flow into the hands of the third parties, bringing out health surveillance en masse?...

By Karlygash Nurdilda on 10/20/20 0

How “Trump COVID-19” Provides Different Search Results on Google and Baidu?

If you search “Trump COVID-19" on Google and Baidu, what do you think the search results will look like? Are they almost the same or completely different? This blog post will show you the answer.

By Yingying Chen on 10/20/20 0

The Dilemma of Prisoners on TikTok: An Analysis of the Implications of Dark Subcultures Online

By Alejandra O’Connor (oconnorale@hotmail.com), Li Shen (lshen141@gmail.com), Niall Manley (niall.m76@gmail.com) Abstract This research study analyses the content of previously-seen, crime-related online content – such as Tumblr’s True Crime Community – exploring the implications of this type of content for...

By Li Shen on 10/20/20 0