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

Scrapebox: a new perspective on an old SEO tool

Scrapebox is a versatile SEO tool but it’s mainly known for its comment spamming functions. The purpose of this article is to show that this software offers many interesting features that could be applied to academic and market reasearch....

By Andrea Fiorentini on 10/12/13 2

Review on Stephen Baker’s The Numerati

Stephen Baker’s The Numerati, published in 2008, tells the story of our modern world’s “binarization;” how every individual is deduced to ones and zeroes through the trails of data we leave behind which are consequently gathered, analyzed and categorized...

By Jeroen Rijskamp on 09/18/11 2

Anomalous Assemblages: A Review of The Spam Book

The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn and Other Anomalies From the Dark Side of Digital Culture, edited by Jussi Parikka and Tony D. Sampson, uses a relatively unique approach to add to the discourse surrounding critical understanding of the...

By John Haltiwanger on 09/17/09 1

Skype spam

Skype is no longer spam free. This afternoon I was asked to add a new person to my Skype. The message it sends is the following: Dear Sir/Madam: first of all, thank you very much for your attention! We...

By Laura van der Vlies on 12/09/07 4

What’s wrong with Web-cynicism?

Whether you're the latest social networking site out of Silicon Valley, or a lowly blogpost fueled by coffee, plans don't always work out. I started writing this post with the title The Wasteland of Web 2.0, and was going...

By Michael Stevenson on 10/22/07 1

blog.google.com: Internet finally subsumed by Blogs

It is well known that Google, which depends on every link it indexes to recommend search results, has a certain 'vulnerability' that blogs expose. Bloggers are professional-amateur-pointers. They publish frequently, they link a lot, and then they syndicate...

By Michael Stevenson on 10/18/07 3

Pingback Spam, Popularity and Protecting Investments

This blog is a real magnet for pingback spam lately. While I’d like to take it as a sign of our growing popularity, that would be like being flattered by calls from telemarketers. Also, it probably says more about...

By Michael Stevenson on 10/09/07 9

Spamming in the city…

A while ago I found this flyer tied to my bike with a rubber band. First I was astonished, then it made me laugh. I have grown up in a small town in the Netherlands and of course quite...

By Heleen on 05/28/07 2

Smart spam and stupid spam and stock spam? Spam spam spam!

I was originally going to write about smart spam but recent spam led me to write about stupid spam. Spammers are constantly improving their methods to get through spamfilters. They increasingly use random names and academic, computer and web...

By Anne Helmond on 04/17/07 5

Mauri!

Mauri is “hello!” in I-Kiribati. Why are you telling me this? You probably ask yourself. Well, let me explain… I was just checking out our statistics and the first three countries on the “visitors per country list”were no surprise:...

By Jeff van Schie on 10/19/06 6