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Evolution of Twitter through Alternative Ways of Usage

Evolution of Twitter through Alternative Ways of Usage

Since Darwin’s On the Origins of Species the idea of evolution through natural selection has been used in a variety of disciplines, even in the field of media studies. Different types of media are born (being a technical invention)...

Twitter for non-profits, break through or break down?

Twitter provides a platform where grassroots organizations can build a new type of relationship with their beneficiaries, partners and critics. It offers a way to maintain transparency, but maybe more importantly immediacy. In disaster situations, it certainly helps when...

From book to booooooooooooooooooooook

In a recent work about the future of printed literature, italian intellectual Umberto Eco describes the book as an eternal technology, something similar to a spoon or a bycicle: while time goes by and innovations pop up ceaselessly, some...
E = Media Combinations2: The survival of the fittest

E = Media Combinations2: The survival of the fittest

Every old medium was once new. And when something gets old we’ve got to search for a way to give it its old glance back. The printed book was once a new medium. It was revolutionary, groundbreaking. But today...

Twitter: what are you feeling?

What if our words had no hidden meaning? What if we didn’t play the mind games that we play in deconstructing and (over-)analyzing every sentence or word or gesture and we would have to look no further than the...

Twitter: The next “great good place”?

... or isn't it a bit too hasty to talk about Twitter effects? My activated Twitter account could not be more passive. Two tweets in about two years’ time is my contribution to the broadening of horizons of eleven people...

While I see, I microblog

Microblogging, everyone is doing it, ‘normal’ people like us and ‘very important’ people like politicians, the Dutch Queen and celebrities. We share with the world what we are doing at the moment, or what is on our minds. According...
Cybercascades in Twitter

Cybercascades in Twitter

Introduction After the attacks on September 11 2001 America started their “War on Terror”. One of the targets in this war was of course Iraq, because Iraq was creating Weapons of Mass destruction (WoMD). This “news” spread around the...

Twitter Research Supported by Info Visualisation

Everyday users of Twitter users provide the world with us with of tweets on topics differing from what they ate, how they feel to what music they listen to. This is a great source for researchers who want to...

Is micro blogging the future for writers?

Micro blogging gained a lot of success over the past few years. With the arrival of web 2.0 there was a need for a new form of writing. Long articles and ongoing features were not what people wanted anymore....

The panopticon is just a prison, guys: On a new approach to understanding new media

Numerous academic books and articles that have claimed to address the workings of new media tend to merely present an online phenomenon’s lineage or draw an analogy between older (media) theory and newer media (theory). Let us, for instance,...
Not to get too emotional… but what happened to emotion?

Not to get too emotional… but what happened to emotion?

She' ll smile to you if you move to the left. No, try a different angle. I don't know... Is she smiling at all? For over 500 years, viewers and researchers have been trying to interpret Mona Lisa's...
Online Activism, Offline Passivism?

Online Activism, Offline Passivism?

Jyllands Posten Social media and Web 2.0 have radically changed the way we communicate with each other. Blogs and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter let us...
Facebook Confessions: Pastoral Power in New Media Practices

Facebook Confessions: Pastoral Power in New Media Practices

Facebook, as a tool to connect, communicate, share, link, network and socialize, has become omnipresent in the Internet landscape. Its history starts in 2004, when Mark Zuckerberg launched the network at Harvard University. It has since reached over 500 million...
How Social Tagging can improve Digitized Cultural Heritage

How Social Tagging can improve Digitized Cultural Heritage

The Internet has in recent years paved the way for the social web. This is a development to the so called Web 2.0. In this manifestation the web finally distanced itself from traditional websites in the old media tradition....

Campaigning and advocacy via social network sites, are social movements on the right path?

I do believe the Web 2.0 is shaping our societies, and much more the way users relate to each other. Social movements are adopting very fast social media technologies in their communication strategy. They use social network sites mostly...

The Customer is Always Right (or at least able to convince the Internet masses they are)

With the dominance of social networking, user generated content, and the ability to comment on just about anything, web 2.0 has changed the way consumers interact with corporations, especially when they are pissed off. Many corporations are performing the...
False Predictions of the Future of Social Media

False Predictions of the Future of Social Media

Perhaps it’s my dissatisfaction with social media hypes, and especially the ones that are ignited by marketing guru’s, but I can’t resist the feeling of pseudo science when I read about analyses and predictions about social media on blogs....

Social Networks and Frameworks of Activism

For nearly ten years now, media analysts and commentators like Tim O’Reilly have sung the praises of Web 2.0 and social media. The new World Wide Web, characterised by its writerly, inclusive and connective nature, was to democratize the...
Hyves, THE information source for companies

Hyves, THE information source for companies

How would I do research in web 2.0 and Social Network Sites? First I have to make clear for myself what web 2.0 exactly is. According to Tim O’Reilly, one of the founders of web 2.0, web 2.0 existed...
“The customers of this product also bought this, would you like it too?” [x] Not interested

“The customers of this product also bought this, would you like it too?” [x] Not interested

When signing up for a service or installing software, have you ever read privacy policies that you had ‘to agree’ with in order to continue? You surely agreed, but what you have agreed with is probably a mystery. The...

The Privacy Paradox in a control society

Nowadays a lot of people are in some form represented on the internet. These virtual forms can include profiles on social network sites like Facebook and Twitter, but also as writings on a personal websites and blogs. They has...

Dissemination of Social Network Sites

Social network sites are very popular within media studies. They are common research subjects. How often did you refer to Facebook or LinkedIn when writing an article? There is not one way to explore the universe of social media....

Internet, Policy and Politics Conference in Oxford

Last week I attended a conference on Internet, Policy and Politics at the OII in Oxford. I was invited to present my paper based on my MA research conducted in Brazil, which I finished a couple of weeks ago.