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Safety Net – Play With Privacy or It Will Play You

Safety Net – Play With Privacy or It Will Play You

  Have you ever used a website that uses cookies? “Liked” a photo on Facebook? Geo-tagged your location in a post or used Google Maps?   Of course you have. But were you aware of how the information you...
The Quantified Self & Big Data: causing a new turn in science?

The Quantified Self & Big Data: causing a new turn in science?

How much time do you spend on Facebook? How many of your friends are living in Amsterdam? What is the best time to wake up in the morning? These questions are hard to answer and can take a lot...
Mobile Tweeting – recognising usage frequency, tendencies and social interaction differences

Mobile Tweeting – recognising usage frequency, tendencies and social interaction differences

The Question Academic research on Twitter has been rife since it hit off in 2006, with significant focus on two topics in particular- that of privacy and identity. Much that has been written by scholars of Twitter has generally...

Challenging Time: Google Plus and Facebook Timeline

‘The most fun thing about going out is when you run into friends unexpectedly. With Hangouts, this sort of meeting becomes possible on the internet for the first time. Let your friends know you’re available and find out who...

SNSs and national identity

Social network sites (SNSs) are more and more drawing the attention of academic researchers, fascinated by their affordances and influence. The most common methodology of researching SNSs, besides on the topic of privacy, is that of identity-management. “While websites...
What is in your bag or what have you wore today?

What is in your bag or what have you wore today?

A very popular group on Flickr is the “What is in your bag group”, where 10722 photo’s are placed of bags and its content and around 19500 flickr- users are a member of this group. When you are...

‘What you’re doing’ is relevant to your followers on Twitter

Sure, Twitter had its impact on journalism, politics and advertising. If you’re a journalist, getting information fast and keeping in touch with your sources is easy. Politicians have found a tool to directly talk and discuss political issues with...

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....

Social Media, Privacy and Publicity with danah boyd

Last week I had the opportunity to attend at a symposium held at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society (TILT) entitled as ‘Privacy and Social Network Sites’. The keynote speaker of the day would be danah boyd,...

Professional networking sites and social-economic status comparison

“Dan was apparent fifty plus, a little paunchy and stubbled. He had raccoon-mask bags under his eyes and he slumped listlessly. As I approached, I pinged his Whuffie and was startled to see that it had dropped to nearly...

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...

The Social Paradox of Social Network Sites

When I was young, although with 26 years of age I’m not old, so let’s say; when I was younger, most of the time when I wasn’t in school I was playing with my friends on the streets. Playing...

Online and Offline Social Networks Evolving/Defriending

Continuing on Kimberley’s post on social network defriending, I’d like to stress some other points relating to social network defriending and its possible context. The Dunbar Number Research by Sociologist Robert Dunbar shows that, at a random moment in...

Social Network Sites – friend/Friend/defriend

Social Network Sites (SNSs), like Facebook and Hyves, are focused on ‘Friendship’. As SNSs get more mainstream and infiltrate in our everyday lives the use of the term ‘Friendship’ becomes more problematic within the SNSs discourse. Using the labels...

Digital activism: using social media to change to world

Online social media nowadays seem like perfect tools for initiating social change in the world. Anyone with a certain goal in mind can reach large groups of individuals, spread awareness, raise a fund and get people to feel involved....

CBS: 29.000 Predators on MySpace

The Internet gives the citizen possibilities for surveillance. Citizens use these possibilities when they think vertical surveillance fails. Especially children are put into discourses of surveillance as if they are members of a vulnerable group, not watched over by...

Superdudes/Sugababes: Guilty or not guilty?

Superdudes.nl and Sugababes.nl, two related websites, together form one of the biggest social networking sites in the Netherlands. Almost 60% of all the youngsters between 13 and 18 have created a profile at least once. Superdudes, not very surprisingly,...

Huffington Post

After more and more frequently visiting the website the Huffington post I’ve been wondering if this website is a social networking site (SNS), as multiple people blog here and are connected, or is this site just a news and...

Fakebooks

Every social network service has its own parodies, the more successful it is, the more it has. I will take facebook as an example for applications and actions that play around with SNS. Facebook is surrounded by at least...
My 342 Friends..

My 342 Friends..

In her article ‘RELATIONSHIP: Context, Culture, Power’ Dana Boyd describes the difficulties we have with defining our relationships. Discussions around social software are flawed because these difficulties. She discusses the context of time in which relationships between people change...

The Uncontrolled Use of Ustream.TV

The Ustream.TV service can be considered as a social network site (SNS) according to the definition of Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison. Next to lifecasting, the service is also used for redistributing copyrighted content. The infringement of copyright poses...
Facebook in a Socio-Cultural Aspect

Facebook in a Socio-Cultural Aspect

According to the statistics the age majority of Facebook users is 19 albeit there are thousands of users aged more than 60.
Xbox Live as a social network site?

Xbox Live as a social network site?

While my own Xbox 360 is still being repaired, a hapless victim of the dreaded ‘Red Ring of Death’, gamers everywhere are using the console’s social network programme called Xbox Live. Rightly so, I might add. Microsoft’s Xbox was...

Social Networking Sites, “To Be or Not To Be?”

Ali Balunywa The famous phrase “to be, or not to be” comes from William shakespeare‘s Hamlet prince of Denmark (written about 1600), act three, scene one. It is one of the most famous quotations in world literature. “ To be or...