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TERF Wars

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...
Why Venezuelans are ganging up on Old School Runescape to combat the effects of an economic crisis

Why Venezuelans are ganging up on Old School Runescape to combat the effects of an economic crisis

As the economic crisis gets worse, some Venezuelans look online to play video games. By selling the in-game gold for real life currency, they make a living. Recently, the Venezuelan players of Old School RuneScape have formed a big...
What is VK and why could it be a social media platform of the future?

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...
Amicus Instagram, sed magis amica veritas?

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...
Join the HIVE: The AR future of social networks

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...
Reality Slap Plugin: You Never Know When It Hits You

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...
“Hidden Cost”: Social Commerce Practices and the Collaboration between Snapchat and Amazon

“Hidden Cost”: Social Commerce Practices and the Collaboration between Snapchat and Amazon

In an era when S-commerce (social commerce) is dominating digital environments, social media platforms use more and more tools to achieve this combination of commercial and social activities. Like Instagram and Pinterest, now Snapchat jumped onto this trend and...
Latinx, Brujx, Commodification and Community

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...
Twitch.tv: A Socially Valuable Platform, or Just Another Amazon Revenue Stream?

Twitch.tv: A Socially Valuable Platform, or Just Another Amazon Revenue Stream?

Instagram influencers and YouTube vloggers have long been seen as the leaders in monetizing one’s online self. New to this scene are an entirely different cohort of digital money makers: those who profit as professional video gamers on live...
Power according to Foucault

Power according to Foucault

Introduction This article gives a short overview about several concepts related to ‘power’ from 20th century French social theorist Michel Foucault. He was highly influenced by Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser. Foucault is both associated as a structuralist and...
ecoarttech: techno-art connecting people with nature

ecoarttech: techno-art connecting people with nature

The New Media art partnership between Cary Peppermint and Leila Christine Nadir entitled ecoarttech aims to repurpose the use of common technologies (e.g. smartphones) with the intent of bringing global communities closer together, as well as local communities closer to,...
A Streamlined Explanation: The Problem with Streaming Games on YouTube

A Streamlined Explanation: The Problem with Streaming Games on YouTube

Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg is one of the most popular video game streamers on YouTube with more than 57 million subscribers (Orland, 2017). Because of a racial slur uttered in one of his recent Let’s Play videos, PewDiePie faced a...
Dissecting Facebook’s Censorship

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...
From Fake to Fact: How the Blockchain May Rewire Our News Consumption

From Fake to Fact: How the Blockchain May Rewire Our News Consumption

Breaking news. No, literally: the news is broken. Fake over fact; clickbait over quality. Increasingly influential social platforms privilege content that ‘works’: content that captures our attention and drives up profits. Consequently, news organizations create such content. A new...
Giving MLM’s a Makeover: Are Beauty Gurus Legitimizing LipSense?

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...
Is Apple our Online-Privacy Vigilante?

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...
AI Algorithm as Personal Style Tracker

AI Algorithm as Personal Style Tracker

Design specifically with a GAN, to overcome fast-fashion and overconsumption What will happen when designers can exactly produce what consumers want and need? The generative adversarial network (GAN) founded by online shopping company Amazon can actually do this by...
The fake fame – Black market on social media

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...
The promise of total Tinderization

The promise of total Tinderization

Tinderization of Feeling Yup, like a lot of my contemporaries, I’m spending alarmingly big heaps of time on dating apps. Leaving aside all that bodyshaming, occasional racism and the paralysing insecurities that they promote, they can be a lot...
Gab.ai: Freedom of (conservative) speech?

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...
When cats are also bots.

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

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...
Search No Further: How Changes to the Search Feature Give Facebook More Power Than Ever

Search No Further: How Changes to the Search Feature Give Facebook More Power Than Ever

Announcing Big Changes: This past week, Facebook launched an update to its search feature that may give Twitter a run for its money – or at very least, some cause for concern. An announcement by Tom Stocky, VP of...
The Logout Project

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...