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

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...

By Juliana Paiva on 10/04/11 2

Social culture in the game industry

Video games have changed dramatically over the last decades. There is obviously a big gap between 1958’s Tennis For Two and the games we play now on our consoles or PC. Of course, the rapid evolution of new technology...

By Renoud Netjes on 10/03/11 Comments Off

Russian Classmates, politics and Georgia

Despite having over 100 friends and former classmates in my friends list on a popular Russian social networking site Odnoklassniki.ru, I left it following a brief Russian-Georgian war in August 2008 and joined an increasing number of people in...

By Mzia Kupunia on 10/03/11 6

How to do comparative media analysis on the web: Start small.

I’ve always thought that in order to understand a network, like the web, better, we should be able to understand as much of the objects and actors that the network itself is made of, as possible. Whilst finishing my...

By Demet Dagdelen on 10/03/11 Comments Off

Programmable dividuals: On social networks and programmability

Descartes Passions of the Soul set the humanistic notion of a separation between the body and the nonmaterial independent mind, emphasizing the conscious individuality and the controlling potential that the mind has over the body. Gille Deleuze departs from Descarthe’s dualism, by...

By Eelke Hermens on 10/03/11 1

Is it worthwhile to develop a Facebook application?

With more than 800 million users Facebook is currently the most widely used social network platform on the Internet. Facebook states that more than 50% of their users are active everyday and each of them has approximately 130 friends....

By Jesse Oyegbesan on 10/03/11 Comments Off

Social death of social networks

The question I was asking myself recently is what makes a social network cool or uncool? Why there are social networks in which having an account is considered embarressing? Why there are exsisting social networks to which some people...

By Urszula Jurgiel on 10/02/11 Comments Off

How Do Facebook and Technology Influence Child Behavior?

When I was growing up in the early 90s there was no such thing as social media. We had never heard of Facebook, Twitter, Hi5, Google+ or MySpace, reason for which we spent all of our free time interacting...

By Luana Pascu on 10/02/11 Comments Off

What Juliet Didn’t Ask

Deepening the Motivations and Consequences of Facebook Aliases I was a freshman in college when Facebook was fresh off the server. The social network’s inaugural class has since grown up, and so has its Facebook identity. An established social...

By Kendall Grady on 10/02/11 Comments Off

Relationships 2.0: Social media – taking the distance out of long distance relationships

Social media has drastically changed the way we go about our daily business – this has been firmly established by now. Media scholars are exploiting (in a good way) all the possibilities and data the exciting platforms provide for...

By Ave Tampere on 10/02/11 Comments Off

“What are your religious beliefs?” – a question of if religion becomes public again in social networking

Events of April 2011 sparked much controversy as the French government declared the public wearing of niqabs and burqas illegal for the first time. The response to this was defiance by many in France who define themselves as Muslim...

By Jamie Franklin on 09/29/11 4

Eagerness to share our lives with the others — where are the online boundaries?

More and more often I find on Facebook things which I would rather never want to find. Sonograms of unborn children of people who I know from high school and didn’t talk to them since then, tomographies of their...

By Urszula Jurgiel on 09/17/11 Comments Off

Book Review: The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser

The Filter Bubbler refers to the personalization processes taking place on the Web, which shape what content you see and more important what content you don't get to see. Big players like Google and Facebook feed you what they...

By Jorrit Schaap on 09/17/11 1

The like button: Something mutual, nothing too personal

An interview with an average net user about the role of the virtual in her life.

By Demet Dagdelen on 09/14/11 Comments Off

Jack in the Box: Digital Activism and Corporate Reputation

The recent case of Jack the Cat going missing on an American Airlines flight has seen its fair share of attention in both new and traditional media. But what are the reasons behind AA’s relentless efforts to cope with...

By Andrei Florian on 09/14/11 11

The Power of Electricity

Every month 2.5 billion pictures are being uploaded on Facebook by their users. The social networking website is referring to itself as the ‘largest photo-sharing site’ on the web. The instant access of information and data means that servers...

By Yeun Au on 09/13/11 Comments Off

Weibo Revolution

As China is famous for their copied and rip-off products there is no difference in the digital sphere. Services and platforms that we have learned to love, resent or can’t go without also exist within the borders of China...

By Jidi Guo on 06/02/11 4

Uprising in India: Facebook Resistance workshop at CIS, Bangalore

Earlier this month multiple Facebook users gathered at the Centre for Internet and Society, in Bangalore, to participate in a workshop dedicated to Facebook Resistance. They were given an on-site opportunity to go beyond the laws and constraints of...

By Marc Stumpel on 04/16/11 Comments Off

Online Love Search: New Identity

You might recognize the feeling of a brief immediate panic, one where your hands fail to remain dry, your mouth goes depleted and you experience slight nausea, recently it happened to me. I had just committed my first ever...

By ibtisam omer on 04/09/11 3

News and Facebook’s ‘Like’ Button

One of the most talked about aspects concerning Facebook’s launch of social plugins was how these would affect the content and distribution of news. My aim in this short post is to briefly address the following exploratory question: “What...

By Catalina Iorga on 03/03/11 1

Data Visualisation: World’s Facebook Friendships

Wondering what a visualisation containing a few dozen million friendships on Facebook would look like? Paul Butler thought of the same and took a shot. He says that visualizing data is like photography. Instead of starting with a blank...

By Philip Man on 12/14/10 1

#You’re fired

Thoughts and funny incidents on… contemporary ways to lose your job ( via Blogspot/ WordPress, Facebook, Twitter) There are many valid reasons for an employee to lose his job: the pretense of economic crisis, the company closing down, the...

By Ourania on 11/01/10 9

Social Media and Revenues: Where’s the Profit?

The information economy that the Internet has facilitated has given rise to some interesting new problems for entrepreneurs and investors as well as webdesigners and creators. When your product is dislocated from material instances, how do you identify demand...

By Onur Yilmaz on 10/31/10 Comments Off

Facebook: open minded panopticon?

Something caught my eye this week that seemed so contradictory that I want to share it with you. In the course New Media Theories, and actually in every other new media course, the principles of Michel Foucault are relevant....

By Jorien De Wandeler on 10/30/10 Comments Off