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

Clasp, a new app helping to bring down Autism barriers

Generally described as a disability that affects how a person makes sense of the world and communicate to others, we will explore how a new electronic device is trying to help and improve the life of those suffering from...

By Caio Domingues on 09/15/14 Comments Off

You see it, you report it. Citizen-based journalism

There is no denying that the media revolution has changed irrevocably the nature of journalism. Internet has fostered new forms of interactive and immediate journalism, allowing citizens to actively participate and generate different contents, they can collaborate in covering...

By Maria Belen Muñoz on 09/10/14 Comments Off

GOOGLE SYNDROME: A Psychological Perspective

Usually Google needs no introduction. But what it stands for is quite relative and as all things in life, it’s in the eye of the beholder. Thus, for my mum Google is the whole internet (!), for some tech...

By Nikos Roumeliotis on 09/10/14 Comments Off

The BB.Suit: Wearable Tech as Fashion’s New Playground

Borre Akkersdijk’s BB.Suit combines built-in technology with 3D printed fabrics offering an aesthetic approach to electronics that challenges the notion of wearable technology. This high tech jumpsuit is a collaboration between the University of Technology in Eindhoven, 22Tracks, CRISP,...

By Ivar Dusseljee on 09/08/14 Comments Off

Has internet worsened our grammar?

Since the advent of the internet and the world wide web, it has never been easier to exchange and share information with people from all around the world. A good part of the technological inventions developed in the last...

By Josip Batinic on 09/08/14 Comments Off

Understanding New Media – a quick overview

By exploring the intersection of computing science, humanities and visual and performing art, new media is exploring its own path towards a science status. If the new media is affecting the way society behaves, we should try to...

By Caio Domingues on 09/08/14 Comments Off

The Digital Book: curating emails via the EPUB format

During the first block of the Spring semester, a group of MA New Media students took part in the elective The Digital Book. This course aims to contextualise the rise of digital publishing in theoretical terms, focussing on themes...

By Rose Rowson on 03/21/14 1

Have we all become cyborgs?

Since the Internet’s first foray the world has changed drastically. As John L. Friedman explained in his book «The World is Flat» in 2006, the Internet has globalized the world in ways we could not imagine, because people now...

By May Andersen on 11/17/13 4

Invading Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect and the Ecology of Fear

Sonic Warfare: Sound. Affect and the Ecology of Fear is a book written by Dr. Steve Goodman, who has a PhD in Philosophy, but to a whole group of people he might be better known under his alias: Kode9,...

By Vincent Sloof on 10/31/13 Comments Off

Digital Hangovers: Capturing an Emergent New Media Phenomenon through DigitalObservatory

Introduction Modern technology has led to a rapidly increasing amount of media objects that can be shared online. Every minute, for instance, more than hundred videos are uploaded on Youtube. Yet, the downside of this development is that what...

By Tessa de Keijser on 10/21/13 1

Visualizing New Media Theories

As part of our New Media Research Practices course, we have been working on a final project consisting of a set of five posters. These posters primarily aim at clarifying material covered in the New Media Theories class,...

By Susan Clandillon on 10/20/13 Comments Off

The Building Blocks of Mobile Innovation

“Mobile innovation is over” – Marcus Wohlsen (Wired Magazine) A lot has happened since the first call from a mobile phone has been made by Martin Cooper 1973 from a Motorola phone. Since then the market has been ruled...

By Inte Gloerich on 10/09/13 Comments Off

From Geo to Neo: Can NeoCities Provide a Creative Utopia for Contemporary Web Culture?

Established in 1994, one of the most popular websites worldwide by 1997, and bought by Yahoo! For $3.57bn in 1999, the US branch of GeoCities closed in 2009. Hailed as a structural precursor to the socially centred web as...

By Cristel Kolopaking on 10/09/13 1

Reputation Economy: Digital behavior and data as a benchmark for e-trust

As Alison Hearn argues in her article, many different user activities such as Blogging, ‘Facebooking’, posting videos on YouTube, writing (informational) reviews and rating services or products are considered as a contribution to the development of the digital public...

By Serkan Yildizeli on 09/11/13 1

Twitternovels – More Twitter than novel

“Paradoxically, it is this very immutability of paper which is now increasingly proving to be an advantage rather than a weakness, particularly in the context of an ever-changing (thus ephemeral) digital publishing world.” (Ludovico 10, 2012) Though this by...

By Stella Rieck on 09/11/13 Comments Off

Google Maps and Fukushima: Collective Memory and Data Visualization

As major world events unfold before our eyes at accelerated speeds, via a host of different medias how can we process these vast quantities of information? In the digital age, we consume news round-the-clock, whether we use smart phone...

By Susan Clandillon on 09/10/13 1

Learning via WhatsApp is what’s up!

WhatsApp is a free smartphone application that is available on iPhone, Nokia, Blackberry, Symbian and Windows smartphones and gives users the possibility to send text messages, voice clips, photos, videos, locations and contacts. This all can be done in...

By Jonne-Marie Bouman on 09/10/13 202

Remediation in Grand Theft Auto

Remediation is definitely one of those well-known concepts that new media scholars can discuss about for hours. According to Bolter and Grusin, remediation is the representation of ‘old’ media in new media. Characteristics of television and radio, for instance,...

By Wessel Schillemans on 09/09/13 Comments Off

IT IS NOT JUST A GAME

It was not far ago when in order for you to have a video game experience you had to purchase a game package which included a DVD and instructions. Nowadays, with the evolution of the internet, games are bought...

By Alexandros Valarakis on 09/09/13 1

Facebook enhances the brand image in consumer minds

Facebook is becoming a marketing tool involved in the 2.0. strategy, itself involved in the global brand’s strategy. The 2.0. strategy draws on social networks, as a marketing medium, and has a bidirectional communication that calls for creativity, rigor and...

By V Weydert on 09/08/13 Comments Off

The failure of Interactive Whiteboard

But did it really fail? Rather, Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) is in fact a huge success from the business perspective of educational technology. Introduced in early 2000s and richly funded by educational technology industries and governments, IWB has obtained the...

By Yoojin Chelsea Jang on 09/07/13 2

Locked-out

By Jolien Siemerink on 06/11/13 1

Tracking a nations mood through Twitter: visualizing how you feel

There has been a shift from static to dynamic information visualization. Lately, information visualizations are being created by user generated input. Datasets can be created by scraping Twitter for certain keywords. The project “Pulse of the Nation” has visualized...

By Alex Maat on 03/20/13 1

Is piracy democratising education?

Piracy, be it of software, music or books, is rarely spoken of in a positive light (Liang 356). Governments and organisations around the world are scrambling to stop copyright infringement from eating into profits. My relationship with piracy started...

By Larissa Hildebrandt on 03/19/13 Comments Off