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

Been There Done That – Fake Your Way Around the World

Nowadays our social media are everything. We’re constantly thinking about a witty comment to tweet, we’re on the lookout for picture perfect lattes to post on Instagram and our life events are instantly shared on Facebook. We live in...

By Lieke Kersten on 10/15/15 Comments Off

Why Instagram finally lets us think outside of the box

Ever since it’s rise to fame, Instagram has been known for its square pictures. But with a recent new update the platform finally lets its users break free from that restriction. To make “telling our visual story easier and...

By Milan van Vugt on 09/17/15 Comments Off

AI: is it just buzz or is it really changing the web design world?

“A.I. Websites. Build for Humans.” It has been quite a while since the non-stop futuristic flashy banners began showing up on my browser. The Grid is an AI web-builder that will build a website for you in a couple...

By Izumi Otsuka on 09/16/15 Comments Off

Be There or Be Square: Instagram Introduces New Sizes

Be There or Be Square: Instagram Introduces New Sizes Many frequent users of Instagram (including myself) at some point experienced the following scenario: a moment captured with the camera on your smartphone is significant enough to share on Instagram....

By Eva Hekman on 09/15/15 Comments Off

Facebook in the Spotlight of the Dark Web

“Facebook is blocking logins with Tor browser. This is crazy. Please help us to share!“ (Facebook, 2013) published Tor Project on Facebook on June 18th 2013. This is not the case anymore. Facebook opened a service for all users...

By Oskar Strajn on 11/07/14 Comments Off

Cloud Based Web

Overhyped or overmarketed? Cloud based applications involve a number of computers being connected through a real-time connection provided by the networks of the internet. It coins the common goal of enabling customers to outsource specific computer...

By Christoph Rauch on 11/04/13 Comments Off

#VemPraRua

How the use of Social Media platforms can mobilize a whole nation and transform the history of a country “Vem pra rua, porque a rua é a maior arquibancada do Brasil” The sentence above was extracted from the song...

By Gustavo López on 09/12/13 3

How Do You Like Your Phone, Sir?

Technology is factually making our lives easier and more efficient, even though this notion comes with the critique that we get more lazy and rely too much on something we know too little about. Smartphones carry much more tools than...

By Ihab Khiri on 09/09/13 Comments Off

What is data visualization’s goal? NGOs and real impact

The main goal of data visualization is to communicate information clearly and effectively through graphical means. (Friedman 2008) Friedman’s definition is simple and concise, yet broad and applicable to any type of visualization. What it fails to provide is what...

By Irina Enache on 03/21/13 2

Open Knowledge and Visual Information

Open knowledge takes root What exactly is at stake with the advent of open knowledge and widely shared information? Let’s take ourselves back just over a decade to a time in which information and especially creative information was being...

By Geoff Kim on 03/11/13 Comments Off

Warning! Your message may turn against you!

The context: Last week witnessed a turmoil on the Romanian online media regarding an advertising campaign. The latter belongs to pharmaceutical company Secom Romania and introduces Neuro Optimzer, a treatment based on pills that improves certain brain functions for...

By Irina Enache on 10/18/12 1

Google and the Principles of the Semantic Web

One of the first goals of the Internet was to expand the knowledge of the users by connecting different data. However, the contemporary web is by no means comparable to this initially academic network. The web expanded unprecedentedly and...

By Lauressa Ford on 09/10/12 Comments Off

Getting real

“We have lived through more than half a century of being constantly told that the future of food was artificial, the future of books, newspapers, medicine and school was virtual. And that we would soon deal entirely with computerized teachers...

By Patrycja Szumacher on 09/08/12 Comments Off

SNS research proposal; Flickr

Now that the use of social networking sites has become pervasive in our daily lives, the deluge of images floating around in the cloud is growing larger then ever. The Internet has moved from a mostly text-based medium to...

By Martijn Dorresteijn on 10/06/11 Comments Off

Book Review: Managing Media Work by Mark Deuze

Mark Deuze starts, in the introduction of his book, to argue that most students that follow studies like; journalism, advertising, games, film and television have lack of knowledge on managing their media work and industry. They know, for instance,...

By Daan Fliervoet on 09/22/11 1

Book Review: Crowdsourcing, How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe.

What do YouTube, Wikipedia, IMDB, Tripadvisor, Linux, iStockphoto and Firefox all have in common? They exist through the collective efforts of millions of ordinary users like you and me. The strategy behind the success of these websites is crowdsourcing:...

By Leander Roet on 09/18/11 1

Giving Away Free Digital Content: How Far Can You Go?

Giving away free content is nothing new. It has been around as part of business strategies for centuries. However, many online businesses are using free digital content as a means of getting attention and building their reputation. How far...

By Jorrit Schaap on 09/14/11 Comments Off

Raising awareness on Product Placement

Advertising is everywhere. From print ads in magazines and billboards, pop ups and spam on Internet, or commercials on television, it is virtually impossible not to see advertisements in daily life. Some researchers even say that we see on...

By Clément Adam on 09/11/11 Comments Off