Filter posts by:
Social Media Discrimination: TikTok as a platform that was openly hiding disabled people’s content.

Social Media Discrimination: TikTok as a platform that was openly hiding disabled people’s content.

What is TikTok? In the 21st century, we have witnessed the birth and rise of a diversity of new social media platforms, which all aim at bringing all people together and let them share themselves, their views, and their...
Did a Human Write this Blog Post?

Did a Human Write this Blog Post?

At the end of June 2020, Microsoft laid off 50 contract news producers for its MSN website. Until then, journalists curated headlines and articles paid for by Microsoft from news organizations and decided which content to promote. These contract...
‘Digital Wellbeing Experiments’ – Confronting Technology and Health’s largest questions in the simplest ways.

‘Digital Wellbeing Experiments’ – Confronting Technology and Health’s largest questions in the simplest ways.

In 2019 Google launched the platform “Digital wellbeing Experiments”. In recognition of the negative impacts our digital devices are having on our lives Google is striving for a more innovative approach to help people find a balance with technology....
Bilibili: a media platform for young Chinese generation

Bilibili: a media platform for young Chinese generation

Sunday, 27 September 2020, 12:34 CEST A Brief Introduction “Bilibili is China’s biggest anime streaming site, as well as one of the country’s biggest video-sharing sites” (Josh), “which derived from a Japanese video-sharing website, Niconico” (Zhou 7). On the...
The switch from live to digital during COVID-19

The switch from live to digital during COVID-19

The whole world is changing due to COVID-19. ‘The pandemic emerges a stressful and even traumatic event that requires individuals to make sense of the new situation and choose appropriate coping actions’ (Yanjun, Hong and Xinyi, 2020 p.1). It has...
A(m)I beautiful? – Questioning AI through a Biometric Mirror

A(m)I beautiful? – Questioning AI through a Biometric Mirror

As AI integrates its way into everyday life, it raises more and more questions on whether to see this technology as assisting or oppressive. Facial recognition art installation Biometric Mirror (2018) contributes to this critical approach, challenging the ethics...
Instagram Poetry as an Untouched Equilibrium: The Issue of Representation

Instagram Poetry as an Untouched Equilibrium: The Issue of Representation

Since popular writer Rupi Kaur’s rise to prominence in 2015, the concept of ‘Instagram poetry’ has been undeniably omnipresent in the world of digital art (Kovalik and Curwood 2019). Yet, as inherently new as the name concretely mentioning the...
VvG: Virtual van Gogh

VvG: Virtual van Gogh

With the rise of COVID-19, many institutions shut down. This allowed an accelerated advancement of organizations to shift on a digital platform. One such case is the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam which allows users to experience the museum...
Pay or you are a porn star: The problem with RansomFakes

Pay or you are a porn star: The problem with RansomFakes

When in the beginning of 2017 deep fakes of politicians arose, people assumed that the new technology would be a threat to democracy. In a world in which we believe everything we see, the Katie Hill scandal has shown...
What is Feminist-Monarcho-Primitivism?

What is Feminist-Monarcho-Primitivism?

Introduction A couple of years ago, the prospect of a wealthy TV star owning multiple corporations with no background in politics entering the presidential elections would not have been considered realistic. Fast forward to the end of his mandate,...
The latest rage on Instagram: creating your own AR face filters and effects

The latest rage on Instagram: creating your own AR face filters and effects

Instagram is a platform that continuously changes, and its latest rage has been the new ability to create your own face filters and effects and share them with other users. The fact that anyone can now create augmented reality...
Mirror, mirror on the App Store

Mirror, mirror on the App Store

Why people are editing their face to perfection, and the dangers that lurk in these ‘subtle’ changes. A genealogy of face editing appsIn 2013 the Oxford English Dictionary chose ‘selfie’ as its word of the year. At around the...
YouTube and the LGBT+ Community: Demonitizing Pride

YouTube and the LGBT+ Community: Demonitizing Pride

Yonathan Tesfai Introduction How many of us have a YouTube channel? How many of us have even created videos of our own? YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim in 2005 as a simple video...
Musical Horizons: Spotify the Secret Nudger

Musical Horizons: Spotify the Secret Nudger

We aim to investigate whether Spotify is impacting our musical horizons by comparing our perceived music taste to Spotify’s suggestions curated by their recommender engines over time. For these purposes, we used data from our four Discover Weekly, Yearly...
What Does a Feminist Approach to  Deepfake Pornography Look Like?

What Does a Feminist Approach to Deepfake Pornography Look Like?

Ida Raffaghello (11903341), Laura Kastalio (12768537), Sanne Kalf (11290196) and Erinne Paisley (12516325)Word count: 2749 Introduction This project focuses on the research question: What does a feminist approach to deepfake pornography look like? Deepfake’s have their historical roots in...

The Game of Life: A case study of video games as social platforms

Introduction Human connection, the feeling of being accepted or even loved. What does human connection look like in our digital day and age? Dating apps like Tinder are obviously a very modern tool of people reaching each other, but...
Dirty Greenwashing: How two apps cash in on the conscious consumer trend

Dirty Greenwashing: How two apps cash in on the conscious consumer trend

Hashtags like #cleanbeauty, #nontoxicskincare and #greenbeautyproducts are circling popular social media platforms, displaying a recent development of the beauty industry towards cleaner, more ethical products. Rooted in consumers’ “frustration over regulatory oversight of cosmetics and personal care products” (Wanner...
Show Me How You Fail – Promoting Authenticity and Genuine Connection through Instagram

Show Me How You Fail – Promoting Authenticity and Genuine Connection through Instagram

By: Deirdre Murphy, Nicola Schmitt, Adriana Munteanu, Brenda Scalco What is wrong with me? Why do I not have abs like that influencer? Why did my last post not get as many likes as the one my classmate posted?...
Search Engine Comparison for Three Controversial People: Greta Thunberg, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson

Search Engine Comparison for Three Controversial People: Greta Thunberg, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson

Alicja Zak, Elise Olthof, Vânia Ferreira and Zdzisław Heydel Introduction This project, for which we have taken the perspective that “raw data is an oxymoron”, conveyed by Lisa Gitelman, examines the different query results between three search engines: Google,...
MOM Over Time: A meta-analysis

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...
Data Visualization: A Case Study of Information is Beautiful Awards

Data Visualization: A Case Study of Information is Beautiful Awards

By Qianyu Feng, Dania Awin, Marta Espuny, Kirsten Hartman Intro & conceptualization. Living in a data-driven world, data visualization is becoming more and more relevant. Developed from scientific visualization, information visualization gained its popularity in the 2000s with the...
The Personalization – Privacy Paradox of the Meditation App Balance 

The Personalization – Privacy Paradox of the Meditation App Balance 

Meditation has been practiced for more than 5000 years, but the last decade people have started meditating with the help of their smartphones. With the arrival of the internet people progressively are sharing and seeking help for their mental...
Resonoo and the Music Industry: could this be a gateway to standardized music?

Resonoo and the Music Industry: could this be a gateway to standardized music?

It is no secret that behind any successful artist is not only a team of production professionals but also a flock of editors, publicists, marketers and sound engineers along with others. The new AI-driven start-up Resonoo has understood that...
How Disney brings a lightsaber into the arena of streaming wars

How Disney brings a lightsaber into the arena of streaming wars

We are all too familiar with the ‘endless scroll’, the phenomena that comes into play whenever we decide to entertain ourselves by watching a film or series. If you are not watching by yourself and you have a companion...