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

Facebook vs Ning – what is “social”?

A social network is, according to Wikipedia, a social structure made of individuals or organizations, which are connected by one or more specific types of interdependency (friendship, kinship, financial exchange, sexual relationships, and relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige)....

By Jan Bajec on 09/29/09 Comments Off

How much do I know about you?

This is the sequel of an experiment I started last week. I was curious how can you use Facebook quizzes for research and marketing purposes. My self made Facebook Quiz has not become very successful. After about a week...

By Marta Colpani on 09/29/09 Comments Off

Social Networking Sites: Safety First

The rise of social networking sites makes people put a lot of personal information on the internet. The idea behind this is simple. How more complete and updated your profile is, the more easier you are to find on...

By Charlotte van Brakel on 09/28/09 Comments Off

Facebook, Connecting and Controlling People

Facebook connects people. Not a very new phenomenon, but the amount of people using the social network increases every day and so does the amount of information people show and share with (too many?) others.

By ellen sluis on 09/28/09 Comments Off

Social Networking Sites (SNS); are we helping in the shrinking of our own privacy?

Social Networking Sites (SNS) are commonly known to just about everyone nowadays or so it seems, who doesn’t at least own a FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Hyves, Ning account or combinations of these and many, many others! But do you...

By Sander Leegwater on 09/28/09 Comments Off

Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Society. (Study Review)

Christian Fuchs was born in Austria in 1976 and is currently an associate professor at the University of Salzburg. He is mainly interested in Media and in Information society research and he's the author of many scholar papers and of...

By Margarida Fonseca on 09/13/09 3

Twitter used to be my Boyfriend

There is so much going on, on Twitter that it is hard to cover it all after using it for a year. Really, nobody knows the future of Twitter. Even the people who created it have no idea where...

By Hannah Biemold on 09/12/09 1

Facebook Connect Vs. OpenID: The Format War for Your Identity

It seems now that it may be Facebook Connect, and not OpenID, that will lead the data portability movement. Do we trust our online...

By Chris Castiglione on 12/06/08 4

Privacy in Twitter

Twitter is micro-blogging software that allows users to report and share what they are doing or what’s on their mind. It can be useful for friends to see where you are and what you are doing and it can...

By Bram Nijhof on 10/16/08 1

Stalking Myself (and How to Opt-out of the Facebook News Feed)

A few weeks ago I created a Facebook pseudonym in order to follow the News Feed of the real “Chris Castiglione”. Too often I hear stories from friends who hadn’t realized that by default Facebook broadcasts almost every update...

By Chris Castiglione on 10/07/08 8

Google Analytics: The Implications of an Easy Setup

Here at Masters of Media it is time for a redesign. As students of the new year we are encouraged not only to contribute with fresh new content to the blog, but also to re-think its shape; both in...

By Andrea Fiore on 09/26/08 2

iGoogle Review

A few years ago I started with using iGoogle, a personalized starting page from Google. iGoogle is one of the best 100 web 2.0 applications according to Webware (from Cnet). With iGoogle you can add applications in the starting...

By Bram Nijhof on 09/22/08 Comments Off

Updated Hyves Pulls Plug on Student Projects After Waag Society Event

((Looks like a possible false alarm, please see update below)) Online social network Hyves has blocked access to the profiles pages for unregistered users. Now one has to be registered and logged in to view a Hyver's full profile,...

By Michael Stevenson on 05/22/08 3

Dystopias after Google

Here at MofM we've done our share of Google criticism, but I think The Last Psychatrist has one up on us. What Hath Google Wrought is a giant-sized portion of skepticism about the 'accidental monopoly', which...

By Michael Stevenson on 10/20/07 2

Nietzsche and privacy

The Internet has brought up a lot of privacy issues over the years. For example personal information that leaks or identities that get stolen. But users can also change their own identity and pretent to be someone else. This...

By Laura van der Vlies on 10/09/07 Comments Off

Big Brother Award of 2007 goes out to … You!

Friday the 21st of September, the annual Dutch Big Brother Awards were held at the Balie in Amsterdam. It was organized by the – unfortunately no longer existent – Bits of Freedom, an organisation which came up for your...

By Erik Borra on 09/25/07 5

New Network Theory – Siva Vaidhyanathan

Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System and currently associate professor at NYU, is here to talk about the Googlization of...

By Michael Stevenson on 06/28/07 3

Streetview Aesthetics?

In 1965, Ed Ruscha photographed Every Building on the Sunset Strip, in a way that may sound familiar to those following the Google Streetview release: Ed Ruscha took the photographs contained in this leporello with a motorized Nikon camera...

By Michael Stevenson on 06/11/07 6

Illegal software allowed to be used for just cause?

On March 3rd 2005 Joseph Catterson, a British 44 year old man, was arrested in England because it was suspected he possessed child pornography on his computer. Previous to his arrest Catterson had removed all 1500 pornographic photographs and...

By Roman Tol on 05/30/07 9