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

GDPR Data Portability and the Semantic Utopia

Since May 2018 you can do a “data subject request” under EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Within 30 days you get all the data an organization have on you. You should also be able to move data from...

By Joel Galvez on 09/23/18 Comments Off

Dissecting Facebook’s Censorship

Since September 2016, Facebook’s banning of the “Napalm Girl” photograph, one of the most powerful images that represented the atrocities of the Vietnam War, has sparked a debate on Facebook’s censorship power and policies. In the 1972 photograph, Kim...

By Tu Quynh on 10/24/17 Comments Off

Giving MLM’s a Makeover: Are Beauty Gurus Legitimizing LipSense?

YouTube influencers have become increasingly important to businesses in the last few years. Viewers are turning to them to know what’s hot and what’s not. But, “with great power comes great responsibility” and online influencers should take this into...

By Nicole Leeflang 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

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

Shitposting: an analysis of its practices and meanings

Sometimes, when friends comment on my affection for shitposting, I jokingly refer to my Facebook page as “a curation of the finest avant-garde memes”. This overtly pompous and purposefully pedantic way of describing content obviously undeserving of it is...

By JP de Magalhaes Guarnieri on 09/24/17 Comments Off

The fake fame – Black market on social media

Sitting on a Saturday morning at my desk, it took me ten seconds to find a website which wanted to sell me 2,500 ‘quality Instagram followers’ to boost my account for the price of about 25€. The website claims...

By Mandy Theel on 09/24/17 Comments Off

Is Vidme the ‘NewTube’? Why video creators are changing sides and how they feel about it

A few weeks ago on September 9, video platform Vidme’s own channel uploaded their weekly episode of ‘This Week @ Vidme’ titled ‘German INVASION’. The video refers to a sudden and significant increase of German led channels on Vidme:...

By Frederike Lichtenstein 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

Uncredited Cruelty: Examining Anonymity’s Role in Cyber-bullying

Many platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google thrive on both the business and social models that accountability is important. From a business aspect, the data becomes more valuable if they can identify exactly who you are. From a...

By Whitney Koontz on 09/24/17 Comments Off

Gab.ai: Freedom of (conservative) speech?

A few weeks ago a Norwegian journalist posted the Pullitzer Prize-winning ‘napalm girl’ photograph on Facebook. But instead of founding the intended discussion, he found his account suspended and the picture removed. The picture contained nudity, which may not...

By Joep Voorn on 09/22/16 Comments Off

When cats are also bots.

Meet Mica. Cat content works. It’s one of the unofficial laws under which the internet operates. Cat content is funny and lifts you up. And now cat content informs you. How? Let me tell you about “Mica the Hipster...

By Marlene Scherf on 09/22/16 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

The New Digital Mall: How Social Media is Changing the Way We Shop

E-Commerce and Web 2.0 Before the Internet – if you wanted to buy something, you had to physically enter a store to purchase it: ‘going shopping’ was a social experience by nature because of the...

By Caroline Nisenson on 09/21/16 Comments Off

Picturing a community: Imgur’s evolution from photo to family

Not so long ago, sitting in a café with a long-time friend, our conversation turned to our favourite teenage movies. With this came a brief mention of Michael Cera, the typecast Hollywood ‘nice guy’. In passing, I happened to...

By WIlliam Nash on 09/21/16 Comments Off

#CopyPaste – The battle between Instagram and Snapchat

There is a battle going on between Instagram and Snapchat.. but who is on the winning hand? A-team Instagram is a mobile phone photo-sharing, video-sharing and social network service. It enables users to take pictures and videos and...

By Arabella Memdouh on 09/21/16 Comments Off

Activism via social media is only a digital graffiti?

Recently it has become an online trend to be socially active and involved in public issues. This kind of activism is thriving: like if you care. Immediately there are hundreds/thousands/million likes and comments under a post that suggests supporting...

By Lina Ku_inskaite on 09/20/16 Comments Off

YouTube: From Video Sharing to Building a Community

What? Where? When? For some, YouTube is just a video sharing platform, but for others (such as PewDiePie, JennaMarbles, or Zoella – only to mention some of the famous YouTubers) it is actually a job. However, in order to...

By Bianca Andreea Banu on 09/19/16 Comments Off

Bad News for Facebook

In the past couple of weeks Facebook and its content-monitoring policy as well as the changes made to its Trending Topics section made the headlines over and over again. These headlines have led to many opinion pieces and several...

By Ecesu Erol on 09/19/16 Comments Off

The Logout Project

We might all have felt this way at some point– scrolling through endless posts and photographs of people who seem like they are living “The Life”: getting that promotion they have dreamed of, marrying the most perfect person in...

By Izumi Otsuka on 10/16/15 Comments Off

HelpOut: Real Help for Real People

The Crisis at Hand Political upheaval in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia have forced about 464,000 migrants to cross into Europe in 2015, a phenomenon referred to as the “Refugee Crisis” (Park). Numerous tragic events, like the...

By Katharina Lueke on 10/16/15 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

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