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Face the Bubble: Revealing How Facebook Selects Users’ News Stories

Face the Bubble: Revealing How Facebook Selects Users’ News Stories

Introduction The media content we are exposed to is becoming increasingly personalised (Borgesius 2). Personalisation in this sense can be explained as online media content tailored to an individual for it to have a more personal appeal to the...
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...
You cannot log out from the grave: The implications of Facebook suggesting immortality within its death policy.

You cannot log out from the grave: The implications of Facebook suggesting immortality within its death policy.

People are barely aware that all their online profiles, pictures, and status updates will remain available online after they decease. When uploading those memories onto Facebook, we create our “digital self”. But when signing up for Facebook, users are...
“ToScan”: Media Literacy and Understanding of Terms of Service

“ToScan”: Media Literacy and Understanding of Terms of Service

  We are posing the question “how can we operationalise a form of privacy literacy in order to better understand social media terms of service?” In this research we engage in an academic debate and as an end result propose...
Have No Fear…Facebook is here?

Have No Fear…Facebook is here?

Since its February 2004 debut, Facebook has evolved from an online yearbook for Harvard students into a daily ritual for 1.32 billion daily active users as a resource for everything from status updates to the latest world news to...
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...
You Snooze, You Lose? Temporary Time-Out from Friends on Facebook

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...
Made in China: The Rise of the SuperBanking App

Made in China: The Rise of the SuperBanking App

Historically, the Western world has made the majority of its biggest and most innovative discoveries through travel and the colonisation of other areas and continents that took our fancy. From tobacco to chocolate, the Silk Road has long since...
Forever Alive: Facebook’s Death Policy and Memorialization

Forever Alive: Facebook’s Death Policy and Memorialization

55 is the average age for people to make their will, according to a certified notary. The management and distribution of properties, money and important documents are the most common possessions in these wills. No one ever asked this...

In The Filter Bubble: How algorithms customize our access to information

‘Mark Zuckerberg promises to do more about the circulation of fake news on Facebook’ Dutch news website nu.nl said on 13 November 2016. This isn’t the first time Facebook has been criticized lately. The social media network has been...
Live streaming; the next big thing?

Live streaming; the next big thing?

Recently, I discovered the live stream button on my Facebook page. I have heard about the applications Periscope and Meerkat with which you can live stream your own content: “Periscope and Meerkat are services that enable users to broadcast...
Super Apps – The Western World is Already Behind

Super Apps – The Western World is Already Behind

In the Western part of the world we usually believe we are ahead of the times and that we have a “one up” on the rest of the world when it comes to the best new technologies and apps....
Chatbots: We’re Only Just Getting Started

Chatbots: We’re Only Just Getting Started

It has been nearly six months since Facebook launched the Messenger Platform at F8 conference, but its main feature, namely chatbots, still continues to remain a hot topic in the tech industry. What Is All That Hype About? Truth...
#CopyPaste – The battle between Instagram and Snapchat

#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...
Activism via social media is only a digital graffiti?

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...
Bad News for Facebook

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...
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...
The CensorSensor – Revealing Localized Censorship through Interactive Maps: A Maptivist Approach to Corporate and Government Censorship

The CensorSensor – Revealing Localized Censorship through Interactive Maps: A Maptivist Approach to Corporate and Government Censorship

Almost all countries filter the Internet to varying degrees; anything from illegal downloading to child pornography and from human rights activities to government criticism. Filtering the Internet has a potential to reinforce the hegemonic power structures and to constrain...
Post Mortem

Post Mortem

        How to Quit Facebook (or Make It Quit You) At the start of 2015, it seemed that Facebook was losing users, especially among younger people (Lang). According to an article in the Washington Post, teenagers...
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.”...
Facebook Jumps on the Bandwagon!

Facebook Jumps on the Bandwagon!

Facebook Notes has been long forgotten over the years as the company’s main focus was to distinguish the platform from other what seemed similar ones in the past days. Today the company (Facebook) seems to have grasped the importance of...
Facebook’s new virtual assistant ‘M’: mastermind or menace?

Facebook’s new virtual assistant ‘M’: mastermind or menace?

Facebook recently introduced the world to ‘M’, its brand new virtual assistant that will reside in Facebook’s messaging app. Will, because for now, the new application is still in its test phase. Nonetheless, this rather unexpected move of Facebook...

“Buy buttons”: Is this the new shopping mecca?

If you just rewind back to the past, freeze your memory in the ‘90s and try to recall the retail websites of this era, it will be obvious how boring and indifferent purchases could be. But it was time...