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

Instagram Authority on Covid-19: Using Data, Algorithms and Interface Changes to Tackle Covid-19 Discourse

How exactly did Instagram roll-out a major change in interface which links people to information about Covid-19? What do we need to consider when a major platform takes such a position? Who has access to the data and algorithms...

By on 12/02/21 Comments Off

One Magic Leap For Mankind: Is this visual platform the magic bullet to remote learning?

The pedagogical shift from classrooms to chatrooms, exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic, has changed education—for better and worse. This blog post seeks to explore some of these issues and how Magic Leap 1, which is a wearable head-mounted AR...

By Paul Bugeja on 10/21/20 Comments Off

Help the food delivery couriers out: would you like to wait 5 more minutes ?

The food delivery frenzy China has the largest food delivery services market in the world, which is expected to exceed 300 billion Yuan in 2020. The market is a duopoly, dominated by two platforms – Ele.me and Meituan, respectively owned...

By on 09/28/20 Comments Off

Life is not a game or is it? The rise of Fortnite and it’s real life battles

Fortnite is a cooperative, battle royale style, online video game, released in 2017. The game has gained huge popularity and has made Epic Games, its developer, billions of dollars. It has also brought about a new way for people...

By Ilian Velasco on 09/27/20 Comments Off

Digital Audio Workstations—The Infrastructure of Music Production

Digital Audio Workstations, or DAWs, have become ubiquitous in the landscape of contemporary music production. The development of DAWs has not only revolutionized studio production workflows, but also put the tools to create sophisticated music and sound projects into...

By Filippo Fagnoni on 10/24/19 Comments Off

The Game of Life: A case study of video games as social platforms

Introduction Human connection, the feeling of being accepted or even loved. What does human connection look like in our digital day and age? Dating apps like Tinder are obviously a very modern tool of people reaching each other, but...

By Martijn van Schip on 10/24/19 Comments Off

Dirty Greenwashing: How two apps cash in on the conscious consumer trend

Hashtags like #cleanbeauty, #nontoxicskincare and #greenbeautyproducts are circling popular social media platforms, displaying a recent development of the beauty industry towards cleaner, more ethical products. Rooted in consumers’ “frustration over regulatory oversight of cosmetics and personal care products” (Wanner...

By robert baciu on 10/24/19 Comments Off

Chinese Communist Youth League: Your Next Influencer

Social media platforms are easy to access, to use and could be seamlessly integrated within different cultures and social structures. They are an integral part of how new content is propagated online, hence making them important in political lives...

By Xiaoxuan Ma on 10/24/19 Comments Off

A bridge between worlds – Robots as a physical platform for the digital

Robots – gimmick or game changer? The current picture one has, when the words “robot” or “robotics” are dropped, can vary widely. While most would probably imagine either Science-fiction-like, humanoid beings or simplistic and gimmicky robots that are commercially...

By on 09/23/19 Comments Off

Amazon Prime Air – convenience, surveillance and more from your “friendly” ecosystem

“The pleasure of consumerism is so widespread that it is has reached the status of a universal human right” (Lovink 4). But for a right like that to exist, others had to fall – such as individual and collective...

By Varvara Boboc on 09/22/19 Comments Off

Build your own community on Discord

Initially meant as a platform for online gaming, text and voice chat app Discord has become much more than that. It allows for communities to sprout and conversations to spark. But where do we draw the line on the...

By Tamar Hellinga on 09/22/19 Comments Off

Epic Games Store’s struggle to become a platform

Epic Games finally found a way to invest the 4 billion dollars of Fortnite revenue: they are opening their store to compete with the largest PC gaming platform – Steam. Steam, originally envisioned as a tool for automatic update...

By Alexander Bernevega on 09/22/19 Comments Off

Google Stadia: A new player has joined the platform wars

You either die an information utility, or live long enough to adopt the politics of platforms. Imagine video games no longer being tied to the hardware boxes they’re designed for, but instead being playable anywhere, on any device. We...

By Tiede Bart on 09/22/19 Comments Off

Picnic – tapping into the comfort of platforms

Cars that drive themselves, a robot serving you at a restaurant, and even skyping someone over the phone while you are commuting. Ten years ago, many of these things were unimaginable. Now in some places they are a staple...

By Silke Mulder on 09/22/19 Comments Off

Solutionism in peer-to-peer networks: solutions by Supshare

Abstract: Thanks to the sharing economy, people who need a certain product or service are easily digitally connected to people willing and able to provide that service or product. As a result, platforms like Supshare that offer these solutions...

By Laura Briganti on 09/23/18 Comments Off

Extended Browsing, Plugged-In Activism

“It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. … And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t” (“I Am Part”). The anonymous...

By Tiancheng Cao on 09/23/18 Comments Off

Facebook AI protects life from Live Streaming

In an era when everyone lives online, Facebook, the biggest social platform, adds constantly new tools for the user. One attractive feature is live streaming. Despite chatting and concerts that we are used to see, live video shows us...

By Anna Vallianatou on 09/23/18 Comments Off

The only way to save the Internet is to claim it back from Big Data

Sometime in November, the proportion of humans on earth using the web will exceed 50%. Close to 4 billion people will have become internet “users”, bringing with them 4 billion sets of data. Tim-Berners Lee created the internet and...

By Lucie Chateau on 09/23/18 Comments Off

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...

By Agnieszka Walewinder on 09/18/14 Comments Off

Apple Watch Out

Just five days ago, on September 9th, Apple held another one of their famous Keynote presentations. On this particular ‘Special Event’, Apple introduced, among other new software and hardware releases, their new and already highly hyped wearable: the Apple...

By Thom on 09/16/14 Comments Off

Connectivity: friend or foe?

According to a news item, Facebook is willing to spend billions on connecting the world to the internet. This might come as a surprise since Facebook isn’t an internetprovider but a social media platform, but will be one of...

By Kyrsha Verweij on 09/08/14 Comments Off

Orto: a New Media solution for horticulturists

A small warning for the reader: This blogpost is not as theoretical as many of you may like it to be. Instead it offers a small case study exhibits the design and decisions of a project I did in order...

By Auke Akkerman on 09/08/14 Comments Off

Academia.edu: Social Networking Meets Open Access Publishing

Scholars are the driving force behind the scientific and social progress of humanity. Even though this statement sounds very grandiose, it is not untrue.The “makers of knowledge” have been throughout the centuries the most revered, respected social castе. They...

By Bozhan Chipev on 03/11/13 Comments Off

Sleek – What does the website’s structure reveal?

Sleek is an internationally distributed fashion and art magazine, introducing contemporary art and fashion issues in a thematically manner. Since 2005, the paper edition is published quarterly in Berlin, but because of its worldwide audience Sleek is only available...

By Isabel Theissen on 10/18/12 Comments Off