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

True Crime TikTok: Affording Criminal Investigation and Media Visibility in the Gabby Petito Case

By: Gabrielle Aguilar, Sofia Ompolasvili, Luisa Garcia Amaya, and Sophie Kerstens On July 2, 2021, micro-influencer Gabby Petito set out on a cross-country road trip across the United States with her fiancé Brian Laundrie. Along the way, Petito hoped...

By Gabrielle K. Aguilar on 10/29/21 Comments Off

Putting the “face” in Facebook: Examining the role of digital media mediation through Facebook’s latest smart glasses

In Reality Check Digital Methods, Venturini et al make the claim that, though we upload our own content to our social media profiles, digital media itself “belong to the companies and institutions that have paid the huge cost necessary...

By on 10/07/21 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

PERSONALIZED JOURNALISM: THE USE OF CHATBOTS BY RUSSIAN MEDIA

The Internet is not a vending machine in which you throw a coin and then get what you want (Lovink, 2018). But what if it is? One of the trends that appeared in late 2015 was the development of...

By on 12/03/20 Comments Off

The Dilemma of Prisoners on TikTok: An Analysis of the Implications of Dark Subcultures Online

By Alejandra O’Connor (oconnorale@hotmail.com), Li Shen (lshen141@gmail.com), Niall Manley (niall.m76@gmail.com) Abstract This research study analyses the content of previously-seen, crime-related online content – such as Tumblr’s True Crime Community – exploring the implications of this type of content for...

By Li Shen on 10/20/20 Comments Off

TERF Wars

Oscar Fitzpatrick, Caitlin Harzem, Gerry LaBarbera Abstract: There was a time when speaking of JK Rowling would primarily include topics regarding children’s literature, or specifically the Harry Potter franchise. In 2020 much of the debate surrounding JK Rowling is...

By on 10/20/20 Comments Off

Signal – Speaking with no one listening

Signal is a messaging app that has been around since 2013. It is said to be one of the most secure messaging apps on the market. Whistleblower Edward Snowden uses it daily and describes Signal as the safest messaging...

By Alexandra Hagedorn on 09/28/20 Comments Off

It’s a Small World – Oculus’ Quest 2 Redefine Distance

Oculus Quest 2, Facebook’s latest wireless Virtual Reality (VR) headset, was released in September 2020. Similar to its predecessor Oculus Quest, the gadget has been largely used for gaming, however this is not where the possibilities end. According to...

By on 09/28/20 Comments Off

Letterboxd: A transformation of film criticism culture in the digital age

It’s 22:30 PM on a Friday night and you have just come out of the latest blockbuster that has been released in the cinema. Do you have to wait until tomorrow’s newspaper to read your favorite critic’s take on...

By Irem Ergul on 09/27/20 Comments Off

What is VK and why could it be a social media platform of the future?

What is the best and most well-known social network of all times? Most of the people would say Facebook. But what if somewhere in the land of forests, snow, and, of course, bears exists a social media platform, which...

By on 09/27/20 Comments Off

From Liking to Consuming: the Liking Economy of Social Media

As one of the most used social buttons, social media “like” now carries strong social significance including impression management, identity construction, and maintenance of social ties online for individual user (Eranti & Lonkila, 2015). In economic terms, social media...

By Xiaoya Zhou on 09/26/20 Comments Off

Chinese Communist Youth League: Your Next Influencer

Social media platforms are easy to access, to use and could be seamlessly integrated within different cultures and social structures. They are an integral part of how new content is propagated online, hence making them important in political lives...

By Xiaoxuan Ma on 10/24/19 Comments Off

On platform aesthetics: TikTok as the next level of the gamification of social exchange online

TikTok has taken the place of being among the most recent cases in social media success history. In just two years since its global launch in 2017, the app has reached the number of 1 billion downloads in 75...

By Lukas Beckenbauer on 09/23/19 Comments Off

Trick-or-Treating Dressed as Apple

Only with a mask was it possible for Romeo to disguise his true identity and enter the Capulets’ ball to meet Juliet. An unimaginable feat in today’s world of digital footprints and traces. With Apple’s recently announced sing-in alternative...

By Miloš Gavrić on 09/23/19 Comments Off

Human Programmability and Happiness

Perception pushing art from Dries Verhoeven talks about pharmaceuticals and makes us question our humanity.

By on 09/22/19 Comments Off

Amicus Instagram, sed magis amica veritas?

Last November, Instagram introduced a new functionality to its app, the “close friends” list (Constine). This feature was a years-late response to the rise of finstas, aka “fake instas”, private alternative accounts intended for a smaller audience than the...

By Marie-Liesse on 09/22/19 Comments Off

Would you let Mark Zuckerberg be your Cupid?

Introduction Facebook Dating, a relatively new platform recently released in the US, boasts to give you better matches than other rival dating apps using the already existing Facebook information it already possesses about you as (Perez, Tech Crunch and...

By Roisin Moloney on 09/22/19 Comments Off

Facebook Gaming: Live Streaming the Perils of Data Privacy

The ability to record and live stream video games has completely reformed the gaming industry as it became the birthplace of popular online live streaming communities. Why do younger people today spend more time watching gaming content than playing...

By Boy Singmanee on 09/20/19 Comments Off

Join the HIVE: The AR future of social networks

The Age of AR Augmented Reality (AR) is set to be the next big step in computing, and experts are predicting a big growth of the AR sector, estimating it at around 140 billion Euros worth by 2024. Many of...

By Max Rogall on 10/23/18 Comments Off

Reality Slap Plugin: You Never Know When It Hits You

With the number of Tweets, Facebook statuses, Instagram pictures and Stories many users share on a daily basis, we think it can be exhausting to keep track of the wide-ranging visibility a single post can have. With a public...

By Jason Park on 10/22/18 Comments Off

Latinx, Brujx, Commodification and Community

Multimedia content creator and writer Johanna Ferreira writes in Hiplatina, about the fact that young Latin people (herself included), are increasingly distancing themselves from organized religion and instead turning to spirituality. Most Latin American households have some sort of...

By Iskra Ramirez on 09/24/18 Comments Off