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

Internet Imperialized

In 2010, Google.cn redirected users to Google.com.hk. Google released an official blog post announcing that it would no longer censor search results for Chinese users. The decision proceeded an allegation that U.S. companies (Google included) had been attacked by...

By Samantha Carter on 09/12/13 1

African Film Industry Made Possible by: Piracy

Everybody I know downloads films and music illegally. The ‘Piracy is a crime’ campaign against movie piracy does not seem to work. March 31 HBO will broadcast the first episode of season three of Game of Thrones. I — with millions...

By Tomas Blansjaar on 03/17/13 Comments Off

Data visualizations: a global matter

Two levels of information processing Our world is saturated with information. Images, objects, texts, numbers, audio, moving visuals, and everything in between. There’s a reason some call the present the Information Age and invent terms like informatization. All...

By Stijnie Thuijs on 03/26/12 1

Book Review: Network Power – David Singh Grewal

Globalization is reintroduced to society in David Singh Grewal’s “Network Power”. A volume that contains so much information, it can easily be viewed as a contemporary globalization handbook. Grewal’s perspective is fresh and bold, albeit not empirically substantiated....

By Ronen Shay on 09/20/10 1

Svetlana wants to meet

This summer I was sitting with a friend on a nice terrace in the city center of L’viv, Urkraine (I marked it on Google Maps, for your interest). The terrace was overlooking the city’s promenade where the local folk...

By Pim van Bree on 09/15/10 1

(Accelerated) World at Work

The Accelerated Living was a theme of the 20th edition of the Impakt Festival (Utrecht 2009) that was focused on changing notions of time. It explored the ways in which we experience time and speed, and the ways in...

By Jan Bajec on 11/02/09 2

Fear And Leisure In São Paulo

A few weeks ago I watched Richard Williams’ lecture about ‘Architecture and Economies of Violence in São Paulo’ as part of the workshop ‘Globalization and Violence’. It doesn’t have to do so much with new media in particular but...

By ellen sluis on 10/29/09 Comments Off

Cell Phone Apps and Scaling the Local

Cell phones applications for development might be what sociologist Saskia Sassen calls countergeographies – they piggy back on mainstream infrastructure produced by a global corporate economy, but for their own aims, including political struggles (or crime). It helps to...

By Morgan Currie on 10/17/09 Comments Off

Chinese low-wage workers disloyal for a reason

I am currently reading a lot for my research and an interesting book I finished a few days ago is Fast Boat to China from Andrew Ross. In Fast Boat to China Andrew approaches the global outsourcing trend in a different way...

By Pieter-Paul Walraven on 03/02/08 2