Masters of Media

Data Visualization and the Aestheticization of Activism on Instagram

In Kennedy and Hill’s article “The Pleasure and Pain of Visualizing Data in Times of Data Power” the way data is communicated through visualization is explored along with the ideological work that is involved, the ways in which data...

By Kate Babin on 10/04/21 0

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

The Big Problem with Uber’s Big Data: Ethics and Regulation of Data Ownership

“Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral”. That is why it is key to understand how we, as users and moderators, give additional meaning to technological features and participate in the complex chain of interactions they...

By on 10/20/21 0

Collective Memory of Surroundings with Alternative Perspectives

Artistic Narration of Data by Constructing the Memories of Humanity View of Refik Anadol’s Installation Machine Hallucination. 18 Sept. 2019. Art in America, Penske Business Media, 2019, www.artnews.com/gallery/art-in-america/aia-photos/refik-anadol-at-artechouse/. Accessed 3 Oct. 2021. An Aesthetic collective experience with “the other”....

By on 10/18/21 0

Presearch: challenging the current framework of proprietary search engines and production of knowledge.

As the current proprietorship search engine providers are not open and fully transparent and their technologies are influenced by economic, political and social factors, the framework for information literacy becomes more and more complex. Distributed search engines aim to...

By on 10/09/21 0

My Fitness Pal; the power of search engines and world building

Jasmin Figure 1 In 2021, the Fitness market (estimated by The Wellbeing Creative Co.) was valued at $96.7 bn. This calls into question for us as media scholars; how does the fitness market manifest and present itself within the...

By on 10/08/21 0

How the Wall Street Journal made Facebook Inc. release an internal research

In the middle of September of 2021, the Wall Street Journal added an article to their ‘Facebook files’. This article surrounded Facebook’s internal research on Instagram and the negative effects it might be able to have on its users,...

By on 10/08/21 0

Screens in motorcars, what could possibly go wrong?

The dashboard does not merely afford drivers control over the car, but also mediates information between the vehicle and driver. The digitization of the motorcar now means that the proliferation of screens increases the amount of information that is...

By on 10/07/21 0

Putting the “face” in Facebook: Examining the role of digital media mediation through Facebook’s latest smart glasses

In Reality Check Digital Methods, Venturini et al make the claim that, though we upload our own content to our social media profiles, digital media itself “belong to the companies and institutions that have paid the huge cost necessary...

By on 10/07/21 0

Roads in You – the Visualization of Research

In “What is Visualization” Lev Manovich discusses the changing role of information visualization (hereby referred to as infovis) as a result of computational advancements. To which he focuses on the practice of ‘direct visualization’ as a more contemporary technique that...

By on 10/06/21 0

On the Possibility of Preserved Privacy: The Case of Google Photos

Today we live in a hyper-connected world with constant online activity. This lends itself to the accumulation of unprecedented data of and about people, dubbed “Big Data”. Google is a key part of this ecosystem and Google Photos is...

By on 10/05/21 0

Stories as Specters of our Past: Evaluating the Impact of Ephemeral Media on Research Practices.

What makes platforms like Instagram Stories important to address is not only our general inability to look at past media artifacts – but also the impact in terms of scholastic research throughout a variety of disciplines.

By on 10/05/21 0

How to Study Shadow Curators? Biases in the YouTube Algorithm

It is getting harder to pinpoint the interferences when it comes to our experience in digital media. We are constantly living under the flood of content the internet has to offer, never really realizing that our choices are being...

By on 10/04/21 0

Privacy, social media and lawsuits

By on 10/04/21 0

COVID-19 Prevention and Control Using Big Data Technology in China: from an ethical perspective

Abstract Given China’s regulatory applications for Covid-19 to monitor the country’s health, it’s critical to engage in the discourse over the significant ethical implications that may arise from the health and personal data collection phenomenon that is highly likable...

By on 10/04/21 0

NFTs and the infrastructural value of digital art.

In March 2021 the most expensive collection of digital artworks ever was auctioned as an NFT, or non-fungible token, for $69.000.000. This event highlights the NFT craze over the past two years (Chow). Some may think the hype is...

By on 10/04/21 0

Scan-to-order System May Serve More Than Just Spaghetti: Data-Hungry Apps Raise Privacy and Security Concerns

Though seen as a win-win proposition for businesses, the ethics surrounding online privacy and protection with scan-to-order systems are particularly pressing concerns, as some apps collect personal data such as order history, name, gender, and phone number. The emergence...

By on 10/04/21 0

“You’re all caught up”: Instagram’s new attempt to expand data collection

When you have browsed through all the posts that your following users have posted in the past few days, Instagram will tell You, “You’re all caught up” by showing a banner. In the past, the subtext of this statement...

By on 10/04/21 0

Why Does One Seek to Quantify the Self? Big Data’s Influence on the Body

This blog post briefly explores the themes of big data and the quantified self. Using boyd and Crawford’s article “Critical Questions for Big Data,” I provide some considerations for why an average person like my father seeks to convert...

By on 10/04/21 0

“You, Me and Instagram – A brief look into user interaction with Instagram’s visual interface”

A look into Instagram's visual interface

By on 10/04/21 0

The fault in our stars

How dropping the combination of astrology, AI, and trolling can help you save your self-esteem Astrology is a long existing pseudoscience, yet over the past few years it has definitely made a significant comeback in popular culture. It’s safe...

By on 10/04/21 0

The CoronaCheck app and the datafication of healthcare

The covid-19 pandemic introduced a new wave of how we use and perceive Big Data connected to healthcare (Poom et al. 2020). As the number of covid-19 cases are monitored and open to access, we have now reached the...

By on 10/04/21 0

23andMe: Visualizing Ancestries and Ethnic Identities in Neoliberal Society

Our new media landscape is overwhelmed with data amidst a big data shift and the rise of data power, agency, advocacy, and pleasure within the context of neoliberal society. The endless amount of data is contributing to the growing...

By on 10/04/21 0

Big Data And AI: Fake Fake News or Fight Fake News

In nowadays, the booming of information technology allows individuals to become content creators and publishers, a great number of data quickly spreads globally on the Internet. Meanwhile, new dimensions for Fake News are born in the rising of social...

By on 10/04/21 0

Metapictures and visual media analysis

Using digital methods to analyze social media has become an important approach. When dealing with different formats of data (text, image, moving image, video) gathered from social media platforms, specific methods have been developed for processing and analyzing certain...

By Chan Ji on 10/04/21 0