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

A click away from giving up our autonomy? – A critical view on Amazon’s new Dash button

The alarm clock rings, you slowly make your way to the coffee machine since there is no other way of functioning at a time like that, but then realize you ran out of coffee yesterday. What a disaster! But...

By Mariessa Radermacher on 09/24/17 Comments Off

Is Apple our Online-Privacy Vigilante?

Abstract: Apple purports that its new Intelligent Tracking Prevention Technology integrated in Safari browser prevents 3rd-party cookies from collecting users’ data, therefore, reducing online ads, and ultimately protecting users’ privacy. This paper challenges this by arguing that ITP’s functionality...

By K. Abdulghani on 09/24/17 Comments Off

The Kakao Empire: The South Korean Example of a Digitalized Lifestyle

In South Korea, you can do everything with Kakao. You can send an ice cream cake to your friends, get updates about new mobile games, manage a bank account, call a taxi and much, much more. Although it may...

By Trisha Lee on 09/24/17 Comments Off

You Snooze, You Lose? Temporary Time-Out from Friends on Facebook

Brace yourselves! Facebook is testing out a ‘snooze’ button that reportedly mutes people on your feed for up to 30 days. With the help of the emerging feature, you could (and hopefully will very soon) walk away from...

By Hanna Yerega on 09/24/17 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

Silicone Robotic Mask: Making Computed Emotions Physical

An important aid in computing our emotions since the digital revolution is the use of emoticons. But our emotions could be captured and communicated better, by moving away from mimicking facial expressions to having roots in real physical functions....

By Nena Snoeren on 09/24/17 Comments Off

‘M’ Assistant – a New Territory For Advertising

‘M’ is an Artificial Intelligent virtual assistant inside Messenger which aims to be helpful to its users when appropriate. M Assistant analyzes their normal conversation on Messenger and pops up to suggest one of the features within the app...

By Gergana Ivanova on 09/24/17 Comments Off

Goalpost in the Ozone: The Deceptively Good Intentions of #Climate

As far as scientific consensus goes, it’s tempting to label the ‘debate’ around climate change as being over. However, to do so invites complacency, a willingness to delegate responsibility to a far-off unknown authority. News organisations, politicians and activists...

By David Molloy on 09/24/17 Comments Off

Volunteering at Hand

A critical alternative to matching the needs of communities Current events in the world, such as poverty, wars, and national disasters, bring forth a rise in volunteering organisations and activities. Therefore, it is surprising that in many countries the...

By Sabina B. on 10/21/16 Comments Off

Share a Dream: A new way to connect people ?

Today more than ever, we are constantly connected and reachable. It has never been so easy to communicate with people around the globe. We can also observe new kinds of social relationships due to technology. In fact, connections between...

By Arnaud Muller on 09/21/16 1

New Media Art and the Aura

New Media Art. A Short Introduction In the last three decades, the term new media art gained massive popularity and became the official label for a wide range of artistic practices that use new media technologies (Quaranta). However, defining this...

By Daria Bojan 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

A true astronaut of inner space: how your phone is making Virtual Reality a reality

“Looking like a cross between a T’ai Chi master, a navy frogman, and the Terminator, a man harnessed to electronic leads and fitted with a strange piece of headgear slowly turns and gestures. The pointing hand and the ballet...

By Nick van der Meulen on 09/16/15 Comments Off

Mobile Apps as a New Level of Reality

“New Media”. This collocation is used so often nowadays (and not just by researchers or practitioners, but by journalists, self-proclaimed experts and general populace) that it takes a conscious effort to take a step back and ask “What’s new...

By Leonid Goryachev on 09/15/15 Comments Off

Refugees Welcome: Network Hospitality with A Cause

Before the trending topic of current situation on the refugees crisis within Europe was gaining its media spotlight, a German-based group has invented a website named Refugees Welcome as response to the problem. The website aims to match the...

By Afra suci Ramadhon on 09/14/15 Comments Off

Markets of Amsterdam. An e-book about the colourful and lively market scene of Amsterdam

As a final project of the New Media Research Practices course, the New Media & Digital Culture MA students of the 2014 class were asked to develop free-form new media projects. The class was divided into 9 groups of...

By Giovanna Salazar Ojeda on 10/17/14 Comments Off

Should we keep our emojis in check? Emojli doesn’t think so

On August 29th, London-based app developers Matt Gray and Tom Scott released an application that could possibly redefine the way we communicate through our digital devices forever: Emojli, a social network, where users can only communicate by using emoticons, or...

By Miles Zornig on 09/18/14 Comments Off

Forget glasses… the future is smart contacts!

Eyeware devices have been around for some time with gadgets like Google Glass or BT-200; what they do is to enhance reality by projecting images into our field of vision and this can be films, videogames or the screen...

By Ana Mireles on 09/17/14 Comments Off

The Narrative Clip. Lifelogging wearables on the rise?

What if you could re-live one moment of your life? “Remember every moment” is the main concept behind the Narrative Clip, a wearable lifelogging automatic camera. You just have to clip it on and it will automatically record your life...

By Maria Belen Muñoz on 09/17/14 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

Data mining at The Times

Data mining, also defined as KDD (Knowledge Discovery in Databases), is a subfield of computer science which has extensively raised in the last years, rapidly becoming a discipline known to a widespread audience, mainly because of its use in...

By Roberto Pizzato on 09/10/14 Comments Off

(Digital) Media: Shaping human´s productive force

Social media marketing, crowdsourcing or the Long Tail – if somebody should tell how the Internet and associated digital media have changed economy, he/she would most likely describe their influence from a marketing perspective: digital media as means of...

By Danny Lämmerhirt on 09/09/14 1

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