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

Twitter Poetry and Mobility in Art

Twitter is the ultimate social networking site. The last trend for new media junks. Journalists, politicians, writers, artists, depressed teenagers, hyper-active middle-aged Internet addicted, new Iphone owners, everyone seems to be out there, on Twitter. Of course, because Facebook...

By Marta Colpani on 10/01/09 Comments Off

How can Social Network Sites help artists to make money?

Big record companies like to blame the internet for the decreasing amount of albums that are being sold in the conventional shops. It seems to me that one of the main characteristics of big conglomerates like the record industry...

By Jelle Kamsma on 10/01/09 3

The ‘Flow’ of SNS

Recently, a good friend of mine asked if he can leave a comment on Wikipedia’s page. This made me think how frequently used online platforms can shape our expectations toward other online platforms. Usually these expectations get detected by...

By Simeona Petkova on 10/01/09 Comments Off

The Social Paradox of Social Network Sites

When I was young, although with 26 years of age I’m not old, so let’s say; when I was younger, most of the time when I wasn’t in school I was playing with my friends on the streets. Playing...

By Harro Heijboer on 09/30/09 Comments Off

Online and Offline Social Networks Evolving/Defriending

Continuing on Kimberley’s post on social network defriending, I’d like to stress some other points relating to social network defriending and its possible context. The Dunbar Number Research by Sociologist Robert Dunbar shows that, at a random moment in...

By Maarten Hoogvliet on 09/30/09 Comments Off

Facebook vs Ning – what is “social”?

A social network is, according to Wikipedia, a social structure made of individuals or organizations, which are connected by one or more specific types of interdependency (friendship, kinship, financial exchange, sexual relationships, and relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige)....

By Jan Bajec on 09/29/09 Comments Off

How to permanently erase your Facebook account

As one of unique experiences of cyberspace and virtual environments is this feeling that you have been transported “from an ordinary into a pure imaginary space”. Real time interaction enforces this feeling by making irrelevant notions such as distance....

By Radmila Radojevic on 09/29/09 Comments Off

How much do I know about you?

This is the sequel of an experiment I started last week. I was curious how can you use Facebook quizzes for research and marketing purposes. My self made Facebook Quiz has not become very successful. After about a week...

By Marta Colpani on 09/29/09 Comments Off

Social Networking Sites: Safety First

The rise of social networking sites makes people put a lot of personal information on the internet. The idea behind this is simple. How more complete and updated your profile is, the more easier you are to find on...

By Charlotte van Brakel on 09/28/09 Comments Off

Facebook, Connecting and Controlling People

Facebook connects people. Not a very new phenomenon, but the amount of people using the social network increases every day and so does the amount of information people show and share with (too many?) others.

By ellen sluis on 09/28/09 Comments Off

How Can Artists Use Social Networks?

Artists and the Ontological Web “As an artist I find that social networking technology is ontological.” -Andres Manniste on Nettime, March 2008. As we use the web we construct a portrait of ourselves over time: what sites we return to,...

By Morgan Currie on 09/28/09 3

From social networking sites to social experiences

While thinking about what the future of social networking sites might be, I became curious about what Wired or Forrester think on the topic, what’s the trend? In this article, Wired acknowledges what has become common sense: people are...

By Margarida Fonseca on 09/28/09 1

Social Networking Sites (SNS); are we helping in the shrinking of our own privacy?

Social Networking Sites (SNS) are commonly known to just about everyone nowadays or so it seems, who doesn’t at least own a FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Hyves, Ning account or combinations of these and many, many others! But do you...

By Sander Leegwater on 09/28/09 Comments Off

Twitter and its networking (in)capabilities

Nowadays, many of the popular social network sites are advanced platforms that more or less evolved from simple community platforms or fora. Where Myspace, Friendster and The WELL (later the Dutch De Digitale Stad popped up as a similar...

By Sjoerd Tuinema on 09/27/09 Comments Off

Social Network Sites – friend/Friend/defriend

Social Network Sites (SNSs), like Facebook and Hyves, are focused on ‘Friendship’. As SNSs get more mainstream and infiltrate in our everyday lives the use of the term ‘Friendship’ becomes more problematic within the SNSs discourse. Using the labels...

By Kimberley Spreeuwenberg on 09/27/09 2

Merging Social Media into the field of Online Dating

Personally on-line dating is not my cup of tea, and my boyfriend would kill me if I would consider it, but for some reason the phenomena itself keeps grabbing my attention. The basic concept of dating sites has not...

By Denise Pires on 09/27/09 Comments Off

Fakebook on Facebook

Fake is not necessarily referring to anything bad here. Basically they are real people with a fake or virtual identity. They are like actors on the Internet instead of movies or TV episodes. They have certain characters with their...

By Sisi Yu on 09/27/09 4

Is open always better than closed?

I went to an exhibition in the Tropenmuseum called Dono’s code, by the contemporary artist Heri Dono (1960). The first of his many politically charged works was Fermentation of Mind. I sneakily took a picture of it because it was quite impressive....

By Rakesh Kanhai on 09/27/09 2

Chinese Cyber World: A World in Itself

Let’s start with an interesting conversation between a Chinese (C) and a westerner (W): W: Oh, it is so nice to meet you! Do you have facebook? C: no. I am sorry. W: Do you have MSN? C: yea,...

By Siying Yang on 09/26/09 2

Digital activism: using social media to change to world

Online social media nowadays seem like perfect tools for initiating social change in the world. Anyone with a certain goal in mind can reach large groups of individuals, spread awareness, raise a fund and get people to feel involved....

By Marc Stumpel on 09/26/09 1

No.1 Social Networking Site: The Web

When discussing social networking sites and social networking as a phenomenon, why do we only mention websites like Facebook, MySpace, Hyves, etc? The web itself is a social networking tool down to its core. When the internet was created,...

By Niels de Hoog on 09/26/09 Comments Off

Are you a nerd, a geek, a dork or a dweeb?

In a new media class at the university everyone always has some kind of addiction. There are students who are addicted to games, some who are addicted to blogs, others to dating sites or stream-videos and chats. Eventually, they...

By Marta Colpani on 09/26/09 1

A Review of: Mapping E-Culture, Navigating E-Culture, Walled Garden

Mapping E-Culture, Navigating E-Culture, and Walled Garden, the three books coming along in a box, picture the general look of the electronic scenery we are in through the decade. Besides interviews to several key influencers, research essays and some...

By Sisi Yu on 09/17/09 Comments Off

How to ‘Blog’!?

For my first post here I did a little research on the ‘MofM way to blog’. And my general opinion is that a lot of posts are of interesting academic value, but at the same time often relatively dull....

By Ramses Petronia on 09/15/09 Comments Off