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Like, swipe, match… “you vaxxed?”

Like, swipe, match… “you vaxxed?”

How Hinge and Tinder have adapted their affordances to the COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic caused a spike in dating app usage while simultaneously altering the standard dating practices. To analyze how dating apps have responded to this change,...
How the Wall Street Journal made Facebook Inc. release an internal research

How the Wall Street Journal made Facebook Inc. release an internal research

In the middle of September of 2021, the Wall Street Journal added an article to their ‘Facebook files’. This article surrounded Facebook’s internal research on Instagram and the negative effects it might be able to have on its users,...
How to Study Shadow Curators? Biases in the YouTube Algorithm

How to Study Shadow Curators? Biases in the YouTube Algorithm

It is getting harder to pinpoint the interferences when it comes to our experience in digital media. We are constantly living under the flood of content the internet has to offer, never really realizing that our choices are being...
Virtual Reality and the future of Big Data

Virtual Reality and the future of Big Data

Abstract As we sift through endless amounts of big data from social media, a new form of media is creeping up on us: virtual reality (VR). One of the biggest players in the industry is Oculus, who is owned...
Ethically Researching Marginalized Groups: Applying Margins-as-Methods to Anti-Vaccination Groups

Ethically Researching Marginalized Groups: Applying Margins-as-Methods to Anti-Vaccination Groups

This is a commentary on “Margins as Methods, Margins as Ethics: A Feminist Framework for Studying Online Alterity” (Clark-Parsons and Lingel 2020), which examines the possibility of their suggested margins-as-methods approach to anti-vaccination groups online. This study’s aim is...
BETWEEN ZOOM-MEETINGS AND SKYPE CALLS: HOW VIDEO CONFERENCING HAS BECOME THE SOCIAL GLUE OF A PANDEMIC

BETWEEN ZOOM-MEETINGS AND SKYPE CALLS: HOW VIDEO CONFERENCING HAS BECOME THE SOCIAL GLUE OF A PANDEMIC

Communication has changed dramatically since COVID-19 spread. Many countries have adopted different degrees of quarantine and remote work is on the rise. Social contact has been dramatically shortened. In the following lines, a discussion will be developed on the...
From art to ethical design; Studio Roosegaarde’s quest for a sustainable and aesthetic future

From art to ethical design; Studio Roosegaarde’s quest for a sustainable and aesthetic future

The clock is ticking: sea levels and temperatures are rising, plastic is building up, and animals face extinction. What if art can be the activator for change?
Signal – Speaking with no one listening

Signal – Speaking with no one listening

Signal is a messaging app that has been around since 2013. It is said to be one of the most secure messaging apps on the market. Whistleblower Edward Snowden uses it daily and describes Signal as the safest messaging...
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...
Media Minimalism: Big Twitter and the Small Data Revolution

Media Minimalism: Big Twitter and the Small Data Revolution

Our mediascape has a value problem. "The methods of social science are dear in time and money," writes Su Golder, "and getting dearer every day." Enter media minimalism: a new school of thought, spearheaded by a gang of logistically-minded...
Ceci n’est pas une Influencer;  the rise of ‘Virtual Influencers’ a fad or the future of online interaction?

Ceci n’est pas une Influencer; the rise of ‘Virtual Influencers’ a fad or the future of online interaction?

Not everything we see on the internet exists outside of our computers and in 2019 we’re not that easily fooled anymore, or so we think… Instagram influencer Lil Miquela truly seems like any other influencer these days; she has...
The Worrisome Biometrics: Deepfakes, ZAO and Privacy Issue

The Worrisome Biometrics: Deepfakes, ZAO and Privacy Issue

In early September, a face-swapping app called ZAO attracted universal attention in China. Using the technology of “Deepfakes”, it allows users to swap their faces into famous characters’ in the film and TV show clips. ZAO prevailed like the...
5G Network Rollout Expected to Stir Things Up

5G Network Rollout Expected to Stir Things Up

Three point three billions. This is the amount of smartphone users around the world for the year 2019 (Statistica). For the following two years, the expected amount of users is to reach 3.5 and 3.8 billions (Statistica). Among what makes...
Smart Home Technologies and the Transformation Of Domestic Space

Smart Home Technologies and the Transformation Of Domestic Space

Since Gordon Moore’s prophetic law in 1965, in which he claimed that microchips would develop so that the speed would double while size would decrease every year, has allowed for the evolution of ubiquitous computing and its introduction into...
Reality Slap Plugin: You Never Know When It Hits You

Reality Slap Plugin: You Never Know When It Hits You

With the number of Tweets, Facebook statuses, Instagram pictures and Stories many users share on a daily basis, we think it can be exhausting to keep track of the wide-ranging visibility a single post can have. With a public...
“Hidden Cost”: Social Commerce Practices and the Collaboration between Snapchat and Amazon

“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...
Matteo Salvini and the potentials of Facebook live-stream

Matteo Salvini and the potentials of Facebook live-stream

Politicians are among the most affected by the breaking of live-stream services in social networks: this new communication has opened up uncharted ways to interact with supporters. Matteo Salvini, the most influential representative of European far-right populism, has developed...
Will Elli.Q be on your Wishlist? Artificial Intelligence within Elderly Care, a Closer Look

Will Elli.Q be on your Wishlist? Artificial Intelligence within Elderly Care, a Closer Look

  As we’re zeroing in on October 1st, the International Day of Older Persons, it’s high time we turn the spotlight to our expeditiously ageing world. While healthcare professionals are tasked with overcoming staff shortages and budget cuts, new...
Are we compromising our privacy and safety for comfort and ease?

Are we compromising our privacy and safety for comfort and ease?

    We are becoming more and more used to the idea of new technology being embedded, into our everyday lives and activities. Marshall McLuhan believes that we treat “technologies as extended bodily organs.” (Durham Peters) We are continuously experimenting...
How Can Art Be Subversive in a Platform System?         The Case of Benjamin Grosser

How Can Art Be Subversive in a Platform System? The Case of Benjamin Grosser

    What would happen if one morning, a morning like many others, after you got up, you discovered that your Facebook home page is completely empty, without any type of content? I’m not talking about a crash or...
Mission Control: The changing boundaries of control and ownership in the world’s biggest crowd funding success.

Mission Control: The changing boundaries of control and ownership in the world’s biggest crowd funding success.

The latest controversy surrounding the in development game Star Citizen, struck me as illustrative of the pitfalls and complexities of new forms of financing, and how they manifest the sunk cost fallacy in new, unexpected ways. It isn’t just...
Extended Browsing, Plugged-In Activism

Extended Browsing, Plugged-In Activism

“It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. … And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t” (“I Am Part”). The anonymous...
Is your personal safety app keeping you safe?

Is your personal safety app keeping you safe?

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports, “one in three women globally have been sexually or physically abused- amounting to some 800 million people world-wide.” One of the tools gaining acceptance among women to help prevent harassment is ‘Safetipin:...
Financial superpowers? Cryptocurrency and the next generation

Financial superpowers? Cryptocurrency and the next generation

Pigzbe, a digital piggy-bank has just appeared on the market, with one goal: introducing children to the world of cryptocurrency. Filippo Yacob, CEO of the company, claims that this device will give a new generation of children “financial superpowers”....