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

What can wii do for us?

“(…) the informational dimension of communication is not just about the successful delivery of a coded signal but also about contact and tactility, about architecture and design implying a dynamic modulation of material and social energies. Information works with...

By Margarida Fonseca on 10/12/09 Comments Off

Twitter: “Blurb 2.0”

The acceleration of communication is a product of our growing need or desire to handle larger amounts of information in shorter periods of time. As efficient as this may sound, there has been somewhat of a public outcry against...

By Thomas Wielemaker on 10/11/09 1

“I’ve had the best breakfast ever” – say it using 14, 140 and 1400 symbols

Phatic communication is a term first used by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski to describe a communicative gesture that does not inform or exchange any meaningful information or facts about the world. Its purpose is a social one, to express sociability...

By Hania Piotrowska on 10/10/09 Comments Off

Twitter in the workplace – Communities of practice, phatic communication and knowledge sharing

Twitter is easy. When you want to start tweeting you only have to enter your e-mail address, think of a screen name and you immediately can start tweeting your every thought. You can make the choice of starting to...

By Gwen Keupe on 10/08/09 Comments Off

The Social Status Race: Battle for the Followers.

Have you ever had that moment were you where looking at someone else’s social network site profile and wondered about the amount of friends this person had? A person with more than 10.000 friends for example? And that you...

By Harro Heijboer on 10/08/09 Comments Off

Does making money make a SNS unpopular?

My gut feeling tells me that Social Network Services (SNS) do not exist because they are so great. They always provide for a basic need they fulfill, which for me has been to start a group in which I...

By Ramses Petronia on 10/08/09 Comments Off

Twitter: Exposing the Idols

Twitter is a perfect tool for getting an insight in peoples daily lives. It encourages the following of public figures as well as “ordinary people”, who might be interesting to you. Besides the role of a follower, you also...

By Rutger van den Berg on 10/08/09 Comments Off

Esther Polak – New cartographies and storytelling of everyday life

Last Tuesday I had the chance to watch a lecture-performance by Esther Polak at the Netherlands Media Art Institute. Esther Polak is an artist born in Amsterdam in 1960 that is working in the field of New Media. Her...

By Margarida Fonseca on 10/08/09 Comments Off

Blogging, Twittering, SMS & Chat improving general writing skills

It is often heard that new media is killing our (especially teenager’s) writing skills. Writing on the Internet take bold forms, which are often assumed to influence the general use of language. Examples are acronyms (used in chat, sms,...

By Maarten Hoogvliet on 10/07/09 Comments Off

Interesting Documentary on Virtuality…

Cyberkoelies…. About chinese modern slaves working for lazy gamers from the west that don’t want to do the first levels of World of Warcraft theirselves so they outsource the “labor”…

By Rakesh Kanhai on 10/07/09 1

Journalism, Meet Twitter (two paradoxes)

“Weird: I tweeted, Anderson Cooper’s person saw it, seconds later I’m phoning in to CNN on the Letterman affair(s). Talk about Twitter power” – Howard Kurtz’s Twitter feed, for the Washington Post. Traditional journalism is having to contend with...

By Morgan Currie on 10/05/09 5

The Twitter Effect

For all those feeling nostalgic about the good old days in which search engines were not based on algorithms but actual people doing the work; your human side of the search engine is back. On Lazytweet you can ask...

By Ramses Petronia on 10/05/09 3

Foursquare: Are the benefits of locative social media limited to cities?

FourSquare has recently been described by bloggers as the next great micro-updating service – a geolocative platform that could compliment and even overcome Twitter. Some are even guessing that with its built-in impetus to visit local businesses, it may...

By Allison Guy on 10/05/09 1

The different faces of Twitter

The enormous growth of the social networking site that is Twitter has many a person wondering. Suddenly every self-respecting website, newspaper, enterprise or person has a Twitter account, which enables Twitter users to follow. Even though the amount of...

By Charlotte Hendriks on 10/04/09 Comments Off

Ning’s Privacy Issues

My background is not only media studies/theories but I’m also enrolled in the Bachelor program of Law at the University of Amsterdam. This post is about my critique on the interaction between privacy and user on Ning.com. For class...

By Tim van Essen on 10/03/09 4

Become a Fan: Facebook marketing

Facebook is smart. And they certainly are not a charity sale. In order to provide the thousands of employees with the great benefits and to keep on growing they’ll annoy their users just enough to make some money, but...

By Hania Piotrowska on 10/02/09 Comments Off

Music 2.0 and the strategy of Artists.

There’s been a couple of postings regarding Music 2.0 and what it means for artists. I thought it might be a contribution to add my findings to this. First of all I would like to briefly introduce my Bachelor...

By Rakesh Kanhai on 10/02/09 1

Absorbed into Facebook – Immersion, engagement and asynchronous communication

When I wake up I make myself a cup of coffee and open up my laptop. I enter the passwords to my Gmail, Youtube, Twitterific and Facebook account and until I close my laptop (on those very scarce moments)...

By Gwen Keupe on 10/02/09 2

Yunomi: Advertising and Social Networking Sites

In the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, of Saturday September 26th, there was an article (Dutch) on a new Dutch website: Yunomi. This website is stated to be a ‘platform’ for women, with articles about fashion, beauty and lifestyle. Visitors...

By Desiree de Jong on 10/01/09 1

The Construction of an Online (Facebook) Identity

The web has become something other than the illusive place where we can get as much information as we want at all times. More than a knowledge database, the Internet has transformed into a place where we can not...

By Charlotte Hendriks on 09/28/09 Comments Off

Does the Flickr ‘style’ manifest a longing for a non-technological authenticity?

Photography on Flickr is clearly tied into the overall tradition of vernacular or amateur photography. Where the introduction of the Kodak-Eastman camera in 1888 brought the means to create photographs to a huge segment of the population, the internet...

By Allison Guy on 09/28/09 Comments Off

Time to get social online, but why?

Why do we socialize online? Because “human beings are social animals,” Aristotle would say so.

By Yu-Fen Chen on 09/28/09 Comments Off

Photos from the first New Media MA Graduation Day

Tuesday the 22nd of September was a big day for both graduating New Media MA students and New Media studies itself. The first official graduation ceremony (which were previously held together with Film and Television studies in Mediastudies) marked...

By Anne Helmond on 09/26/09 2

Are you a nerd, a geek, a dork or a dweeb?

In a new media class at the university everyone always has some kind of addiction. There are students who are addicted to games, some who are addicted to blogs, others to dating sites or stream-videos and chats. Eventually, they...

By Marta Colpani on 09/26/09 1