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

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 Comments Off

Have You Gone Green? INFRAWARE as a Digital Intervention for Environmental Awareness

INFRAWARE (composed of the words infrastructure, awareness and hard/software) is a browser plug-in that displays how your personal use of technology is deeply entangled with the planet’s resources and the environmental crisis we are currently experiencing. Go green. Paperless...

By on 10/23/19 Comments Off

“Hidden Cost”: Social Commerce Practices and the Collaboration between Snapchat and Amazon

In an era when S-commerce (social commerce) is dominating digital environments, social media platforms use more and more tools to achieve this combination of commercial and social activities. Like Instagram and Pinterest, now Snapchat jumped onto this trend and...

By Aikaterini Mniestri on 10/19/18 Comments Off

Make-Up Metrics: The Downfall of the Beauty Community on Youtube?

Since its inception in 2005, YouTube has been host to an ever-expanding community of people looking to showcase their artistic and creative ideas on the platform. With over a billion hours of videos watched every day and with tools available...

By Erika Grimes on 09/23/18 Comments Off

“Poop tech is the next big thing” – The Age of Quantified Self Tracking

In the age of the quantified self we are asked to self-track our every mental and physical move to ensure us that we can live to our fullest potential, even if that means we have to track our poop…...

By Nadine Linn on 09/25/17 Comments Off

Encountr: Sharing Experiences in a Media City

With the ubiquitous presence of new media in our urban environments, we can refer to the context that we live in as The Media City. Taking this concept as a main element in our research, our approach has been...

By Talía Cu on 10/21/16 Comments Off

Is This Legal?

The Is This Legal? smartphone app. provides users with easily accessible and transparent information about legal systems they are subject to in their current, geotagged location – complicating users’ readings of foreign national identities. ITL’s concept arose from brainstorming,...

By Richa Watts on 10/15/15 Comments Off

Interactive music videos

Its feels like yesterday. Me as a teenager watching MTV in my room all day long. But even more , I remember how frustrated I felt that I couldn’t see my favourite videos whenever I wanted. Not to mention...

By Anne van Egmond on 09/08/14 Comments Off

Listen to This: Don’t Miss the Sound to Convey Data!

Aristotle wrote in his work Metaphysics that sight is man’s most significant sense. “We understand because we see”, Alberto Cairo similarly states in his book The functional Art. Philosophy has tried to understand sight and the relation between images and human perception since the beginning...

By Ariadna Matamoros Fernandez on 04/15/14 Comments Off

Digital Hangovers: Capturing an Emergent New Media Phenomenon through DigitalObservatory

Introduction Modern technology has led to a rapidly increasing amount of media objects that can be shared online. Every minute, for instance, more than hundred videos are uploaded on Youtube. Yet, the downside of this development is that what...

By Tessa de Keijser on 10/21/13 1

Website defacement and the ethos of the unknown

Website defacement (along with practices like distributed denial of service attacks and password cracking) is one of the most frequently deployed methods used by hackers. Perhaps the most infamous example of this practice is the defacing of the PayPal...

By Jakko Kemper on 09/12/13 Comments Off

The Visual Language of New Media: the book as database

– By Katía Truijen, Eva Valkhoff, Serena Westra and Sasha Wood What happens when you transform a book into a new media object? Can you visualize a book in a new media way? And what happens to the narrative...

By Serena Westra on 11/03/12 1

Peas and carrots, Bonnie and Clyde, database and narrative

Okay, first of all sorry for the title. If you are hoping to get some randy Bonnie and Clyde details or some smashing peas and carrots recipes, I am afraid I will have to disappoint you. But, if you...

By Charly Landman on 09/20/12 1

Plan (Your) Obsolescence – Archive (as) Art

This article is a co-creation by Autumn Hand, Juliana Paiva, Kendall Grady and Mario Gesteira. Archive (An Informal Introduction) Let’s blow the dust and grime off the archive. Let’s get to the art of this matter too. Whether archive...

By Juliana Paiva on 03/13/12 2

Nicholas Carr didn’t convince me

I came upon an article today that said that research shows that Facebook popularity might be predicted by brain regions or in more sensational terms “Facebook may be changing people’s brains“. The research was based on 165 people: “One...

By Demet Dagdelen on 10/19/11 2

Web 3.0: Against the Semantic Web

There seems to an awful lot of speculation about where the web as a whole is heading. Whereas it's possible to make predictions and regard the web as a homegenous entity, doesn't seem to be relevant. We like our...

By Eelke Hermens on 09/12/11 5

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

Visualizing what is happening

Going through an older post in the MoM’s blog referring to Walter’s Ong book “Orality and Literacy”, I discovered a term referring to a new “hybrid form” of culture that has spread on the internet: The Secondary Orality. The term is emphasizing...

By olga paraskevopoulou on 04/21/11 Comments Off

The Search Engine That Talks Back to You

With the mission of defining 'the future of information consumption', the founders of Qwiki, a self-proclaimed multimedia alternative to the text-based search provided by Google state to have launched the 'next big thing': a narrative search-tool based on the...

By Caroline Goralczyk on 03/20/11 2

The rebirth of data – between database and narrative

In arts, it has always been customary that artists influence each other and build upon the work of their peers. However, in the 20th century, this tendency magnified even further. Art movements like pop art and Dada, with their...

By Cendy Calis on 03/06/11 3

Digital text and Language Learning

The replacement of printed text by digital text might strike us as another carefully manufactured revolution, but those who have had a lifelong use of communications and media technologies surrounding them might not be as intimidated by this transition...

By Bram van der Kruk on 10/16/10 Comments Off