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

Weeping Angel: The latest surveillance tool, that can turn your smart TV into a bug TV

Earlier this year, a revelation by Wikileaks called Vault7 refueled the privacy debate concerning intrusive media (Hacker News; The Verge, 2017). The series released documents on CIA activity between 2013 and 2016, showing how the intelligence agency gained access...

By Nina Welt on 09/25/17 Comments Off

Gov 2.0: please like your government

Imagine a friend of you unlocking your smartphone, scrolling through your apps and detect the Adopt-a-Hydrant app. Surprised and impressed he asks you what kind of app that is, in which you can respond: ”oh just normal you...

By Rik van Eijk on 09/08/14 Comments Off

The Internet is now built on mass surveillance

Brought to light in recent months, the Edward Snowden-powered NSA leaks have publicized the wholesale spying efforts by US and UK intelligence agencies that undermine the very fabric of the Internet – turning it into a vast surveillance program...

By Nicholas Vieira on 09/09/13 1

Open data? We need to speed up!

Europe is ‘sitting’ on a supply that has a potential market value of billions of Euro, that could encourage new innovations, and that could increase the transparency and governance of public life. That resource is the data held by...

By Natalia Miszczak on 03/26/12 Comments Off

Show, Give and Hack: A Call for Open Data

I’ve got a confession to make. When I’m watching the news and the newscaster starts talking about the national and global economy, I find it hard to maintain interest. Of course, this is due to the fact that it...

By Bree Tahapary on 03/22/12 Comments Off

The Public Sphere, New Media and Politics

According to Metareporter, a student blog for BA-student Media en Culture about new media in newspapers, a lot of articles in Dutch traditional media are about new media subjects. The top 3 tags that are being used are: Twitter,...

By Daan Fliervoet on 10/06/11 3

Cyber Recruiting: The US Army on Social Media

In my first post I shared my primary interest: Governments & New Media. For this particular research, I propose to look into a very specific part of government’s new media use: recruiting for the military. As most Western countries...

By Floris Spronk on 10/05/11 Comments Off

Media art to teach the unaware people

My first blogpost on the Masters of Media blog should be about a topic I’m interested in., but that’s not as easy as it looks, because my interests are very wide spread. The reason why I’m following the master...

By Maarten Jansen on 09/15/11 Comments Off

Swift Access at the Cost of Swift Access: Diginotar

On the tenth of July 2011, the Dutch web security company Diginotar was hacked by (supposedly) a student from Iran. He was able to corrupt the so called SSL certificates and break into Gmail accounts and government websites. Nine...

By Stijnie Thuijs on 09/14/11 Comments Off

Reducing the ministries’ excessive use of paper

In the early nineteen-eighties, computers became widely adopted by the Dutch ministries. Then, for a decade or so, the computer mainly acted as a replacement of the typewriter. The computer was primarily used for word processing and doing calculations....

By Lennard Torbijn on 10/20/10 Comments Off

Picnic Creative China

Last Friday, I attended Creative China, a partner event at Picnic 2007. One of the main topics of this seminar was the use of Internet versus government regulations and Internet restrictions in China. The Internet is by no means...

By Qilan Zhao on 10/03/07 2