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

Does Twitter promote writing?

Over the years Twitter has gradually developed, meanwhile its practices have also changed drastically. The contemporary celebrities took their places, the early adopters started exploring the potentials while lobbying about it and ultimately the platform rapidly started to expand...

By Sjoerd Tuinema on 10/05/09 2

The Paradox of Choice on Twitter

Even though I have spent a large portion of my life connected to the internet, I have noticed my attention span waning in the past few years. The first year I went to University in 2003, I walked into...

By Sarah Moore on 10/05/09 1

Txtng news in 140 characters

It is no news to us that text messaging is morphing our modern culture. In 2008, the British scholar David Crystal has observed how text messages in mobile phones and IMs can influence our live technologically, sociologically, psychologically, commercially, and...

By Yu-Fen Chen on 10/05/09 Comments Off

The Habermasian implications of the Twittersphere

‘Blogosphere’, ‘Twittersphere’, ‘Afrosphere’. We’re gradually getting used to a new media terminology whereby we quickly refer to new communication spaces and specified fields as ‘spheres’. As the Twittersphere is still rapidly growing, we might want to look back at...

By Marc Stumpel on 10/04/09 1

The different faces of Twitter

The enormous growth of the social networking site that is Twitter has many a person wondering. Suddenly every self-respecting website, newspaper, enterprise or person has a Twitter account, which enables Twitter users to follow. Even though the amount of...

By Charlotte Hendriks on 10/04/09 Comments Off

“Who Do You Think You Are?” —-Everyone is Narcissist

I admit that I am a fanatic. When I began to use twitter this week, I do find a new world: wow! I can communicate with celebrities! A lot of them use twitter to tell us what they are...

By Siying Yang on 10/04/09 Comments Off

We Are All In a show: Be a Mad Man on Twitter

So here is the story. You log in your Twitter account and find one user named exactly as a character on one current TV episodes, then another, and another. Obviously they are not real, although they talk exactly as...

By Sisi Yu on 10/04/09 1

Twitter is Joris Luyendijk’s Answer.

A lot of journalists discussing Twitter seem to fall back on an old habit, criticize. I guess it is a journalistic-reflex, maybe even a purpose to criticize. But in case of Twitter it is regrettable the discussion didn’t moved...

By Han Rusman on 10/04/09 5

Twitter Poetry and Mobility in Art

Twitter is the ultimate social networking site. The last trend for new media junks. Journalists, politicians, writers, artists, depressed teenagers, hyper-active middle-aged Internet addicted, new Iphone owners, everyone seems to be out there, on Twitter. Of course, because Facebook...

By Marta Colpani on 10/01/09 Comments Off

From Metaphysics to Metadata
Jorge Luis Borges, tagging, and social networks

In his short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbius Tertius the argentinian writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges imagined a place with a completely different perception of reality than ours. In Tlön "the prime unit is not the verb, but the monosyllabic...

By Nicola Bozzi on 09/28/09 Comments Off

How Can Artists Use Social Networks?

Artists and the Ontological Web “As an artist I find that social networking technology is ontological.” -Andres Manniste on Nettime, March 2008. As we use the web we construct a portrait of ourselves over time: what sites we return to,...

By Morgan Currie on 09/28/09 3

Twitter and its networking (in)capabilities

Nowadays, many of the popular social network sites are advanced platforms that more or less evolved from simple community platforms or fora. Where Myspace, Friendster and The WELL (later the Dutch De Digitale Stad popped up as a similar...

By Sjoerd Tuinema on 09/27/09 Comments Off

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

Possibilities and threats for popstars in Web 2.0

Popstars have an economic function, like filmstars. They promise a performance. They are the profit makers of the entertainment industries. From an ideological point of view, popstars maintain a myth of meritocracy. The industries and the stars themselves want...

By Arno de Natris on 09/02/09 1

TweetDeck: A Cyberspace Odyssey

Some people get very nervous using Twitter; they find the constant stream of (seemingly) unimportant personal exclamations incredibly annoying. They say: how on Earth are you supposed to keep track of all that information? Well, those people should try...

By on 04/10/09 2

Concept: using Twitter as a flow regulator

This scenario will illustrate the possibilities of social media like twitter to have a positive and substantial influence on ordinary life. In this case, the “flow regulator tweet” will very efficiently regulate the flow of people waiting in line...

By Bas Bisseling on 04/03/09 3

Follow and Connect on Twitter

On a lot of social network sites a friend has to be approved and this only works if both users add each other. This also means that one of the two can break up and the other one loses...

By Hannah Biemold on 02/20/09 3

I tweet you this: “Obama wins, but …”

The silence on this blog was just because we were holding our breath the last couple of days. We are a new media blog and not a political one. But we cannot let this pass without mentioning. Now Obama...

By Minke Kampman on 11/06/08 Comments Off

As Simple As Possible, No Simpler!

I've also noticed the uncomfortable "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" phenomena in which Nicholas Carr explains how the web's immediate access culture is causing many of us to loose our deep reading skills. I believe that simplicity can be...

By Chris Castiglione on 10/23/08 1

Oral Culture 2.0

Because both television and micro-blogging can be explained according to the concept of secondary orality, does this also mean that the effects of micro-blogging, such as reading and writing short messages on Twitter for instance, are similar to the...

By Stephan Barmentloo on 10/21/08 9

Twitter as Discourse

On a first encounter with twitter, one may understandably think: ‘what are these twittering twats tweeting about!’ The twats bother each other constantly with utterances too short to be meaningful. A common reply is: Just try it for yourself!...

By Guido van Diepen on 10/17/08 Comments Off