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“Encrypt your face”: protestors Signal digital data privacy fears with new face-blurring feature

“Encrypt your face”: protestors Signal digital data privacy fears with new face-blurring feature

In the wake of George Floyd’s death, protestors flocked to encrypted messaging application (“app”) Signal to plan events and share content. In response, a new tool was quickly released that allows faces to be blurred in photos. These events...
Co-star: Personalized astrology as a form of communication

Co-star: Personalized astrology as a form of communication

Astrology, the study of cosmic objects, human patterns and seasonal shifts, has been practiced for decades, predominantly in three different cultures, Western, Hindu, and Chinese. For some, it exists as a coping mechanism to cushion uncertainty. However, for others,...
Camarilla: New Concept of Social Media or Not?

Camarilla: New Concept of Social Media or Not?

Is it not cool to have so many friends on social media anymore? Do social media undermine the definition of friendship? Are we ever more concerned about our privacy? These questions are provoked by the emergence of a social...
The Brain’s Introduction to the Internet of Things (For Neuromancer)

The Brain’s Introduction to the Internet of Things (For Neuromancer)

The Brain Logs On Our technological culture too often takes its standard of development to be “marginally better consumer gadgetry” (Williams & Srnicek).  It takes some effort to puncture the hype and discern what are the leaps and bounds...
Putting the Face back in Facebook

Putting the Face back in Facebook

“Mark Zuckerberg is promising Facebook users a new button to express an emotion other than “like”. It’s being referred to as a “dislike” button, though Zuckerberg says it’s going to be a tool to express empathy, rather than contempt.”...
Could Snapchat’s new feature challenge Facebook’s dominance in terms of trust and privacy?

Could Snapchat’s new feature challenge Facebook’s dominance in terms of trust and privacy?

What’s the next Facebook or is there one? Ask many, including John D. Sutter (2012), who suggests that this question is not only wishful thinking, but an increasingly likely reality. Jamie Turner argues that although Facebook is still “king...
Brazil Left Facebook

Brazil Left Facebook

Although it’s winter in Brazil, the so-called ‘Brazilian Spring’ has clearly arisen in June and July 2013. The protests in Brazil show parallels to the ‘Arab Spring’ demonstrations (Dec. 2010-Feb. 2011), in which network communications were used to form a grassroots movement. Through...
[Video] The Bias of (Online) Communication

[Video] The Bias of (Online) Communication

By: Larissa Hildebrandt & Thomas Groen Our task for the 2012 Wild Card Symposium was to bring theory to life, by explaining a book in a new, digital way. In a merging of old and new media, we produced a...
Cultural Bias in Data Visualization

Cultural Bias in Data Visualization

Data visualizations have to deal with the hard task of presenting data in such a way that the intention of the visualization becomes clear to the audience. Using literature dealing with the translation of data into design and the...

The Limitations of Protocol

Internet is often praised for allowing people to speak up and publish freely, rather than opinions are suppressed by higher powers. On the one hand, everyone has the ability to start a blog and publish whatever they like. On...
Social Network Abstinence

Social Network Abstinence

In this postmodern age, McLuhan‘s thoughts about medium as an extension of ourselves seems more and more accurate. However, if the medium is us and we are the medium, how we can detach from it? Nowadays, social media is one...
E-readers, will they substitute educators and librarians?

E-readers, will they substitute educators and librarians?

The heavy task of lugging stacks of books might be seeing the end of its era, for with the expanding digitalisation of textual content, EBook readers and Edocuments ( PDF files, Word Doc, podcasts etc.) are introducing a more...
Educate Me in 140 Characters or Less

Educate Me in 140 Characters or Less

When packing your bag for school, make sure you have your lunch, books, and favorite Twitter client. The social network is making great strides as an academic tool, as more and more educators realize the benefit of fast, transparent...

Forums are dead… long live Twitter? – Music artists in a new age of connectivity

If there’s one element of the Web 1.0 era that seems to have survived the age of social networking of today, it must be forums. But for how long? In the world of music, professional musicians seem to have...

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...

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...

Does Twitter promote writing?

Over the years Twitter has gradually developed, meanwhile its practices have also changed drastically. The contemporary celebrities took their places, the early adopters started exploring the potentials while lobbying about it and ultimately the platform rapidly started to expand...

American Podcasting at New Vision

  Rebecca Jane Harshbarger is an American journalist freelancing at the New Vision newspaper. The New Vision Group is the biggest multimedia house in Uganda. It publishes 8 newspapers and 5 magazines. It owns 3 FM radio stations and...

Twitter and the Aphoristic Society

Twitter has been denounced by some as a useless waste of time. However, the short and snappy, "aphoristic" communication tool may also be a symptom of how people like to communicate today. The author argues that we are probably...
“To Twitt or Not To Twitt”

“To Twitt or Not To Twitt”

As it is defined in Wikipedia – Micro-blogging is a relatively new phenomenon defined as “a form of blogging that lets you write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters) about your life on the go and send...

Twitter – A Solitude Wail?

I follow you means I’m watching you and what you are pretending to be doing every second. Is that true? Or is it that I want everyone to watch me? In other words is Twitter a medium for creating...

Book Review on ‘Here Comes Everybody’

Review of the book 'Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations' by Clay Shirky about new tools of communication and organizing of groups on the Internet. What are the social implications and what will change?