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

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,...

By Simran Tamber on 10/27/21 Comments Off

For a Digital Humanism, New Media as a Pharmakon

This commentary draws upon an article written by Geert Lovink in 2008 and the work of Gilbert Simondon to discuss the concept of digital culture in the contemporary era.

By Mathis Guerreiro on 10/04/21 Comments Off

Instagram’s @browngirlgang: feminist research ethics, digital diaspora, and intimate publics

In recent years, public Instagram pages have become spaces to express, contest, and create shared gendered ethnic identities. Utilizing @browngirlgang as a case study, this blog explores the implications of theorizing such spaces as intimate publics while functioning as...

By Simran Tamber on 10/04/21 Comments Off

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...

By Anniek de Koning on 09/23/19 Comments Off

– Great song, who’s that? – AI.

“Music that listens to you” (AI music) ‚ “We’re developing musical artificial intelligence to build tools for creative people” (Jukedeck). „AI music composer – create the prefect soundtrack for your VR game” (Amper). These are different start-ups’ slogans, but...

By Maria Swierblewska on 09/24/18 Comments Off

ArtPassport: A Digitalized and Democratized Experience of Art

As media technologies and practices continue to advance, the art world is simultaneously facing a metamorphosis that presents new challenges to not only what constitutes art—but how art should be experienced. ArtPassport is one such example of an app...

By Anya Doshi on 09/23/18 Comments Off

AR – the Way to Go When Art is Lost in a Fire?

The inferno that recently destroyed over 90% of Brazil’s National Museum’s collection has once again shown how ephemeral physical objects are. In order to preserve cultural heritage museums generate digital archives, but what about exhibiting lost art? Is augmented...

By Lisa Schlichting-G.E. on 09/23/18 Comments Off

From Leiden to Livoberezhna:  How Memes of a Dutch Statue are Supporting Digital Activism in Ukraine

Introduction: Meeting the Awaiter As the old adage goes: “love makes you do strange things.” On August 18, love compelled me to cycle for over two hours in the sweltering and sweaty summer heat, from Amsterdam to Leiden University....

By Hayden Lutek on 09/24/17 Comments Off

FemInstagram: can Instagram help fight sexism?

Lena Dunham, Feminista Jones, Anna Gensler, Rupi Kaur are only a few of the many social media activists, involved in the debate on feminist issues, but all of them report having been victims of cyber-bullying in one way or another. Besides...

By Emilija Jokubauskaite on 09/19/16 Comments Off

The Lebanese Hashtag War: People vs. Government

Like many of the Arab Nations that surround it, Lebanon has fallen into the hands of an escalating social revolution. The Lebanese population began voicing its discontent towards their government about the garbage that has been piling up, since July...

By Kelly Sadek on 09/17/15 Comments Off

Cute Culture in Private Couples App: Communicating with Kawaii Stickers

Mobile apps designed for couples to communicate in a private setting has started to gain popularity in the past few years. In the West, there are apps such as Couple, Duet, and Avocado. In the East, Between, an intimate...

By Vincent So on 09/17/15 Comments Off

Here, kitty kitty: Interactive Cat Street View Map

Cats are everywhere. They are on the streets, in our houses, our social media feeds, in magazines and Purrcast, YouTube videos, festivals and even on clothing. If you haven’t noticed, cats are a very popular part of internet culture...

By Xeniya Kondrat on 09/15/15 Comments Off

rMA Thesis Conference 2015: (pre)Cyberspace Perspectives on Information Technologies

The following is a modified transcript of my research presentation for the 2015 Research Master in Media Studies Thesis Conference. My thesis is an exploration of magical writing practices in contemporary digital culture. This was too much to talk...

By Rose Rowson on 05/05/15 Comments Off

The Apple Watch: Fashionable and Tangible

Images of wearable computers range from 1940s detective Dick Tracy through to Michael Knight’s 80s wrist watch. The cartoon detective’s watch, in particular, has reached iconic status in the electronics community. As perhaps one of the strips most recognizable...

By Ivar Dusseljee on 09/15/14 Comments Off

White noise; an ancient ruin?

There are some different perspectives on white noise. Looking at white noise from the engineer perspective is like watching an infinite vortex that produces randomness in its purest way; the mean of 0 and variance of ∞. On the...

By Oskar Strajn on 09/11/14 Comments Off

The Software is the Message

In a mini article of his, new media theorist Lev Manovich rephrased Marshall McLuhan’s most famous sentence by replacing the word ‘medium’ with the word ‘software’, saying that: “The software is the message”. For Manovich, software is an universal...

By Michael ten Pas on 09/10/14 1

On the Road Trip Mixtape

I grew up listening to albums from beginning to end. Each of my CDs had a character of its own, presented as a cohesive piece over the course of a half hour or more. Songs flowed in a narrative bound by mutual...

By Max Kortlander on 09/09/14 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

Genres for the Digital Hangover

As boundaries between the private and public sphere are beginning to blur. It is getting harder and harder to keep private content private. Most of the times nothing major happens when you send out a personal message into the...

By Bart Schoenmakers on 11/11/13 Comments Off

Finite FM | Podcast with Franco Berardi

In 2011 Franco – Bifo – Berardi, an Italian media theorist and media activist, published the book After the Future with AK Press, an anarchistic publishing company. He writes about the idea of the future and the way it is...

By Inte Gloerich on 10/31/13 1

8tracks and web-radios: the contemporary music consumption is personal and social

Since the growth of the Internet and its collection of interactive platforms and social networks, the cultural industry has turned a critical corner. This statement is especially true for the music industry in term of music creation and consumption,...

By V Weydert on 10/31/13 Comments Off

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

Porn 3.0

An online platform to crowd-fund porn production? This not-so-silly idea has been the subject of much online talk, from tech specialists to webzines but even more serious newspapers, especially after the launch of GoGoFantasy or the more famous Offbeatr. This Kickstarter for...

By Matthieu Foucher on 10/07/13 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