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

App Review: Avoidr & Anti-Social Networking.

Avoidr is a plugin powered by Foursquare which allows users to see check-ins of those they want to avoid. It seems perfect for dodging that awkward moment when you bump into an ex, evading conversations with that annoying or...

By Liam Voice on 10/10/11 Comments Off

Facebook, towards ubiquitous computing?

Last week an opinion piece by sociologist Ben Caudron was published in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. In it, Caudron expressed his views on the latest announcements by Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg at F8. The most interesting new changes...

By Bree Tahapary on 10/10/11 Comments Off

Open social networks and their role in society

Social media has grown to amazing heights the last couple of years. Some people say that these social media platforms help to activate citizens and to help answer social issues. Examples of the power of these platforms are abundant:...

By Wouter Timmermans on 10/09/11 Comments Off

SNS research proposal; Flickr

Now that the use of social networking sites has become pervasive in our daily lives, the deluge of images floating around in the cloud is growing larger then ever. The Internet has moved from a mostly text-based medium to...

By Martijn Dorresteijn on 10/06/11 Comments Off

How Facebook made my Boyfriend Cry: About Social Networks and Worst-Case Scenarios

Last monday, just after the first lecture, I went home sick. Not that much of a problem, thank God, but I forgot to ask about the assignment at all. Luckily, Geert was so kind as to send me an...

By Roos van Tongerloo on 10/04/11 1

Free labor? An attempt to determine the value of user generated content – for the user

Writings on the value of user generated content tend to stress the (market) value users produce for companies such as Facebook by adding content, labeling these activities as "free labor". Assuming that there must also be something in it...

By Joep Hegger on 10/04/11 1

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

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

What happens to your online data when you die?

Not that you'd care, but it’s messy.

By Andrian Georgiev 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

Social Network Analysis: Considering Alternative Methodologies

The increasing extent of the Internet has also witnessed an incredible increase in the popularity of online social networking. Websites such as ‘Facebook‘ and ‘Twitter‘ are now the most frequently referred to examples although there are countless other social...

By Philip Breek on 10/01/11 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

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

Social networks + SEO = Social SEO ?

Sometimes the results of a search on Google, Bing or Yahoo are not really satisfying. If you search for specific terms sometimes the search results are very limited. Often only the first three search results give usable information. The...

By Jesse Oyegbesan on 09/13/11 Comments Off

4chan, Ethics and Digital Methodology

How much are you willing to disclose online? Do you post your phone number? Do you have embarrassing pictures on Facebook? Do you Tweet your current location? I think it’s fair to say most people have boundaries when it...

By Liam Voice on 09/13/11 Comments Off

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