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

Twitter as a marketing tool

For marketers using new media strategies is becoming popular. Direct mailing is a popular tool which is already used for many years. Social networks have taken over email in terms of popularity. Twitter is a very popular one. Businesses...

By Suzanne Schram on 10/16/09 Comments Off

The universal library of enhanced e-books

Kevin Kelly explains in his article Scan this book! a future in which it is possible to create a universal library. In this library all the existing books should be present in a digital form. For a long time...

By Suzanne Schram on 10/16/09 Comments Off

The Geospatial Dimension of News

In one of his blogposts Chris Anderson came up with rather expressive metaphor for a phenomena we all experience in relation to news: ‘That our interest in a subject is in inverse proportion to its distance (geographic, emotional or...

By Jelle Kamsma on 10/16/09 Comments Off

Interpassivity on Facebook

Social networks give online opportunities to construct social connections, stay in touch with our friends and create/share user-generated content. They are characterized by interactivity; users are capable to react to each others’ actions. However, as our connections grow, our...

By Marc Stumpel on 10/16/09 2

The Cybraphon, the Baroque, the Embodiment of the Digital

Wunderkammers, literally a ‘cabinet of wonders,’ are generally viewed as the precursor to the natural history museum, although such collections also spanned the breadth of human endeavor from art to anthropological artifacts to religious relics. Wunderkammer embody an approach...

By Allison Guy on 10/16/09 Comments Off

Manuel Castells: Who has the networking power?

I have placed Web 2.0 and social networking platforms as ‘media objects’ within a framework of Manuel Castells in the context of the network society. What interests me in particular is the tension Castells described, between mass communication and...

By Radmila Radojevic on 10/16/09 Comments Off

The notion of ‘disorientation’ and the proxy server

Few days ago, I was editing my assignment-entry on Wikipedia (logged in) when I received a warning (generated by bot or editor) that the IP I am currently using might belong to a proxy server. Although the administrator of...

By Simeona Petkova on 10/15/09 Comments Off

Clouded Software or Software in the Clouds

The Cloud is all in one; storage of data, software as a service, Web 2.0, and so much more. It is the network of computers that distribute processing power, applications, and large systems among many machines (we already use...

By Jan Bajec on 10/15/09 Comments Off

Classification, culture & the Flickr.com tag

Web 2.0 tagging systems like Flickr’s categorize the website’s content bottom-up. The classification is powered by users applying their common sense and intuition; wisdom-of-the-crowd, resulting in a folk taxonomy of everything that is to be found in the Flickr...

By Maarten Hoogvliet on 10/15/09 1

Discourse network 2000 Does technology influence what we write?

How do the tools that you use for writing influence what you write? Alan Liu researches this relation between technology and writing. He argues that our reading and writing is part of “discourse network 2000”. We structure our knowledge...

By Kimberley Spreeuwenberg on 10/15/09 2

Diagrams of the false

Personas is a student’s project developed in the MIT Media Lab that shows people how Internet sees them. Using a language processing, computer creates a data profile of your online identity, when entering your name. The program attempts to...

By Susana Zaragoza on 10/13/09 Comments Off

Second Life meets FaceBook: Why do we like being part of a virtual community?

Even though Levy‘s writing style is not my favorite (and that is probably because I am getting used to the Dutch style, very to-the-point), I still can handle it (probably because, in the end, I’m Italian and his mother...

By Marta Colpani on 10/13/09 2

Manuel Castells in my research of cyberactivism

For the past decade, cybersphere has played an important role for activism(as cyberactivism). The 30 November (N30) protesters against the WTO meeting in Seattle in 1999 denoted the significant use of the Web to organize, publicise and mobilize. As...

By Yu-Fen Chen on 10/13/09 Comments Off

The Potential Power of Twitter’s Search Engine

Last week, I wrote about Twitter from the perspective of psychologist Barry Schwartz and what he calls the Paradox of Choice. “With so many options to choose from, people find it difficult to choose at all.” From this perspective...

By Sarah Moore on 10/12/09 Comments Off

The Mighty Morphing Short Shorts

Literature has been shrinking. No, I'm not referring to the decrease in readership demographics, but about “new” literary forms that sprang up in the 1990s. What will be referred to here collectively as short shorts are narrative works characterized...

By John Haltiwanger on 10/10/09 1

Why Digg.com Just ‘Works’ & Why Its Users Quickly Revolt.

So, I just finished reading the better part of Jonathan Zittrain’s lastest book: The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. In it he deals with the question how generative media on the internet (like Wikipedia) may...

By Joery Bruijntjes on 10/10/09 Comments Off

Twitter a New Direction for Social Media

Twitter has grown exponentially the last two years and is most apparent in the use of the service by celebrities. No other internet application can count on the massive participation of public figures. Ashton Kutcher, Al Gore, Britney Spears,...

By Albert Cornelissen on 10/10/09 Comments Off

Twitter Poetry and the Re-use Era: the Creation of Meaning

As I wrote in the last post about my new media research on Twitter, this new social networking site offers a very specific new format for communication. It gives a constraint of 140 characters to write a status update....

By Marta Colpani on 10/09/09 3

Aphoristic message (overload?) by a CMC world

Communication is as old as humans (or humanoids) itself, from a grunt, a shout to a simple gesture – we have always had the ability to convey messages to others around us – whether we’re correctly understood is a...

By Sander Leegwater on 10/08/09 Comments Off

The significance of Twitter

Since its start in 2006 people have speculated about the significance of Twitter. Twitter has often been criticized for it's lack of content, but is also praised for the empowering possibilities it offers us. I question both these...

By Kimberley Spreeuwenberg on 10/08/09 Comments Off

Twitter and the Vertical Stacking

In Politics of the Very Worst (1999) and Information Bomb (2000) Paul Virilio argues that ‘speed’ historically has been a source of power in all societies (from horsemanship, to railway transportation, naval power, flight and finally information technology). ‘Speed’...

By Simeona Petkova on 10/07/09 Comments Off

The Uses of Twitteracy

Why do I tweet?. Because I’m a narcissist?, because I want to start a revolution?, because I want to share my activities?, because I want my aphorism in the Twitter Wit book?, or simply because everyone’s doing it?. Honestly...

By Rakesh Kanhai on 10/07/09 Comments Off

In search for universal language

Umberto Eco, a cultural critic, semiotician, and a writer said that we live in an age where the “diminutive, the brief and the simple are highly prized in communication” (Thurlow & Brown). New communication technologies can empower young people...

By Jan Bajec on 10/05/09 Comments Off

“ILNY, it’s a gr8 plc”

According to the recent statistic from ITU (International Telecommunication Union), in conjunction with UN, more than half of the globe population is subscribed to mobile telephony systems. And this number competes with that of the Internet subscribers. While mobiles...

By Radmila Radojevic on 10/05/09 Comments Off