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

Choose a book by Amazon

Following the digital technology development, people’s personal life already tied up with social media companies. These companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon intruded every aspect of people’ whole life. Even how to read and find a book also depends...

By Linxin Liu on 10/03/21 Comments Off

Feminist Tools for Feminist Research

In the margins stand other softwares, approaches, and visions to resist mainstream and extractivist technologies that stand in the back-end of even the most feminist methods. Adopting these tools is itself an act of resistance. In the hegemony stand...

By on 10/03/21 Comments Off

What are the odds of a full acceptance of the Big Data powered xG model in modern football?

Big Data in world football is on the rise. A plethora of clubs use data analysis to optimize their performance. The question is whether this kind of data driven approach doesn’t drown out other kinds of research. Are there...

By on 10/03/21 Comments Off

Solving crimes using search engines

By on 10/02/21 Comments Off

TikTok: The Ticking Clock on Fast Fashion

The video-sharing platform, TikTok, is contributing to the acceleration of fast fashion through its affordances. The platform is driven by visual media, the platform accommodates video content with the approach of attention economies. This is evident in TikTok’s technological...

By on 10/02/21 Comments Off

The future in the eye of the beholder?: Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories and their claim on our data

Since Baudrillard made his famous notion about a ‘hyperreality’ in his book ‘Simulacra and Simulation’ (1981), many people have been inspired by his differentiating views on reality. Big Tech companies are since their foundations influenced by the concept of...

By on 10/01/21 Comments Off

Search engine, knowledge, and COVID-19

It is not so surprising anymore to know that the globally used search engine Google is ineffective and unreliable in many aspects, despite the fact that it is still one of the main sources of information nowadays. After all,...

By on 10/01/21 Comments Off

Dealing with two pandemics. Why is ‘infodemic’ a threat?

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, people are choosing social media as a source of news explaining the current situation of the global spread of the virus that would ease their anxiety (Gruzd et al. 2021,...

By on 10/01/21 Comments Off

As users, to what extent do we have rights over our privacy on Facebook?

Privacy, a concept which we are all so familiar with but also very deprived of. When speaking about Facebook in the context of privacy, many are aware of the abuse of information sharing, however, can there be an advantage...

By on 09/30/21 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

Only[Adult]Fans: Affording Digital Sex Work

In a time when many were either let go from their job or suffering from lack of human contact during isolation, one online service which mends both of these issues in differing ways – for reasons we will investigate further...

By on 10/20/20 Comments Off

Fighting Fire with Fire: Can AI Prevent Calamitous Misuse of Deepfake?

Members: Neelesh Vasistha — neelesh.vasistha@student.uva.nl Sarah Burkhardt — sarah.burkhardt@student.uva.nl Wen Li — wen.li@student.uva.nl Sofia Rastelli — sofia.rastelli@student.uva.nl It is late evening on November 2nd, the night before U.S citizens will vote in a pivotal election. You’re sitting at home,...

By Neelesh Vasistha on 10/16/20 Comments Off

Draw me like one of your French boys

Activism against online sexual harassment As the digital era has made former consumers into prosumers; creating, editing, liking, disliking, saving and sharing content around the clock, life’s perks and detriments have mutated into the online realm too. With the...

By Christian Ran on 09/28/20 Comments Off