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

Harvest your crops, feed your dog, serve the dishes… socialize!

Let me get this straight. I don't have a pet. I never felt like growing pumkins. My cooking skills are below average. Does that make me socially "incompatible" with the millions of people playing Pet Society, Farmville, Cafe World...

By Ilektra Pavlaki on 09/13/10 3

The Arab media revolution

Since there have been inventions for the use of communication amongst the human race there have been institutions, governments and corporations trying to control them. As Noam Chomsky cites: 'Unless people are controlled, they are going to challenge power'....

By Laila Koubia on 09/12/10 Comments Off

Who’s stalking you on Facebook?

On the mythical algorithm that determines the selection of the 6 friends in your personal Facebook page. For a while now I’ve noticed that two of my Facebook friends were always being listed in my personal page. Now, I...

By Emina Sendijarevic on 09/12/10 4

Is it actually true that Blizzard Entertainment will make enormous amounts of money on the 5th edition of BlizzCon?

Blizzard Entertainment is a major publisher and developer of games and entertainment software. This American conglomerate, placed in California, is behind multiple ‘game of the year’ awards. Additionally it is also the owner and creator of battle.net, world’s first...

By Bart Brodzki on 09/10/10 Comments Off

Facebook the Movie

July this year Facebook achieved a big milestone, their 500 million member-mark. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest one in the world. This success story started with Mark Zuckerberg who created Thefacebook at the...

By Jidi Guo on 09/10/10 4

Social data analysis – Information visualization and participatory culture

Researchers in all areas of human knowledge are overwhelmed with data. Through the process of sensemaking, in which information is collected, organized, and analyzed, new knowledge is formed and further action is informed. We must make sense of data...

By Jan Bajec on 04/27/10 4

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,...

By Sjoerd Tuinema on 04/14/10 1

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...

By Maarten Hoogvliet on 01/23/10 12

Google Wave is waving at YOU

Google Wave attempts to encourage Google users jump out of search box. To start with Google Wave, you need to find ‘friends’ in order to wave each other. Revealing your real identity is the first as well as a...

By Yu-Fen Chen on 11/01/09 1

Google Wave: A new way of creating dialogue

Google Wave is an online communication tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more ....

By Denise Pires on 10/18/09 6

(Re-)Constructing Social Networking Sites: Examining Software Relations and its Influence on Users

It's a little overdue, but I hereby officially want to post my MA thesis for everyone to read (and/or use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license). This thesis was written in a total period of about...

By Annewil Neervens on 10/18/09 Comments Off

Happy Bookmarking

Happiness is effective. Emotional states can be transferred directly from one to another among people in social life, while few people realize the same phenomenon applies to social networks. Out of this James H. Fowler from Department of Political...

By Sisi Yu on 10/17/09 1

Interpassivity on Facebook

Social networks give online opportunities to construct social connections, stay in touch with our friends and create/share user-generated content. They are characterized by interactivity; users are capable to react to each others’ actions. However, as our connections grow, our...

By Marc Stumpel on 10/16/09 2

Second Life meets FaceBook: Why do we like being part of a virtual community?

Even though Levy‘s writing style is not my favorite (and that is probably because I am getting used to the Dutch style, very to-the-point), I still can handle it (probably because, in the end, I’m Italian and his mother...

By Marta Colpani on 10/13/09 2

Baidu Tieba: A Reflection of Manuel Castell’s Theories

Manuel Castells is a sociologist, he was born in Spain and now is a professor in t the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and also a have taught in University of California, Berkeley. He especially researches into information society...

By Siying Yang on 10/13/09 Comments Off

Twitter Poetry and the Re-use Era: the Creation of Meaning

As I wrote in the last post about my new media research on Twitter, this new social networking site offers a very specific new format for communication. It gives a constraint of 140 characters to write a status update....

By Marta Colpani on 10/09/09 3

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...

By Sander Leegwater on 10/08/09 Comments Off

Twitter and the Rise of Impersonal Communication

Before the rise of twitter there already existed older -digital- communication devices that shared the same idea: short and fast communication between people. Those were mainly writing, faxing, emailing, chatting and later sms text messaging. In the case of...

By Charlotte van Brakel on 10/07/09 2

Why are we using Twitter anyway?

The last couple of years online communities have been developing applications for users to share daily updates about their life, thoughts and whereabouts. Hyves provides a ‘WieWatWaar’ and Facebook has it’s own ‘Wall’ where users can update their friends....

By Denise Pires on 10/06/09 5