Masters of Media

Feminist Tools for Feminist Research

In the margins stand other softwares, approaches, and visions to resist mainstream and extractivist technologies that stand in the back-end of even the most feminist methods. Adopting these tools is itself an act of resistance. In the hegemony stand...

By on 10/03/21 0

What are the odds of a full acceptance of the Big Data powered xG model in modern football?

Big Data in world football is on the rise. A plethora of clubs use data analysis to optimize their performance. The question is whether this kind of data driven approach doesn’t drown out other kinds of research. Are there...

By on 10/03/21 0

Afghanistan: a mine of big data?

Everything seems to be about (big) data these days, and, as much as there are numerous advantages, we must look at it critically, evaluating their menaces. This subject will be approached raising concern on what is happening with the...

By on 10/03/21 0

Shrek, Bots, and Whistleblowing: Dismantling the Texas Right to Life Whistleblower website in an Age of Dataveillance

On September 1, 2021 Texas introduced a highly restrictive abortion ban called the Texas Heartbeat Act. It is the first of its kind to rely solely on enforcement by private individuals through civil lawsuits. In anticipation of the law...

By Gabrielle K. Aguilar on 10/02/21 0

Solving crimes using search engines

By on 10/02/21 0

TikTok: The Ticking Clock on Fast Fashion

The video-sharing platform, TikTok, is contributing to the acceleration of fast fashion through its affordances. The platform is driven by visual media, the platform accommodates video content with the approach of attention economies. This is evident in TikTok’s technological...

By on 10/02/21 0

Infrastructuring Vision: An Examination of Automatic Alt Text on Facebook

In this commentary, I apply Susan Leigh Star and Geoffrey C. Bowker's concept of infrastructure to Facebook's automatic alt text tool. I discuss the tool in terms of its relational quality, the interplay between foreground and background, and the...

By Natalie Kerby on 10/02/21 0

Telegram groups as Online Alterity: Empowering or Disempowering?

Over the recent years, there have been many debates on freedom of expression and user privacy online. While moderation on social media platforms seems to be increasing every year, messaging app Telegram chooses a different path, saying they are...

By on 10/01/21 0

The future in the eye of the beholder?: Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories and their claim on our data

Since Baudrillard made his famous notion about a ‘hyperreality’ in his book ‘Simulacra and Simulation’ (1981), many people have been inspired by his differentiating views on reality. Big Tech companies are since their foundations influenced by the concept of...

By on 10/01/21 0

Search engine, knowledge, and COVID-19

It is not so surprising anymore to know that the globally used search engine Google is ineffective and unreliable in many aspects, despite the fact that it is still one of the main sources of information nowadays. After all,...

By on 10/01/21 0

Dealing with two pandemics. Why is ‘infodemic’ a threat?

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, people are choosing social media as a source of news explaining the current situation of the global spread of the virus that would ease their anxiety (Gruzd et al. 2021,...

By on 10/01/21 0

Can Strava be said to produce ‘objective truth’ from ‘raw data’?

In this commentary I tie main points from the introductory chapter, written by Gitelman and Jackson, of the book “Raw Data is an Oxymoron” (Gitelman), with data produced by the application Strava as an object of self-quantification to critique...

By Martin Trans on 10/01/21 0

As users, to what extent do we have rights over our privacy on Facebook?

Privacy, a concept which we are all so familiar with but also very deprived of. When speaking about Facebook in the context of privacy, many are aware of the abuse of information sharing, however, can there be an advantage...

By on 09/30/21 0

Disruptive CGI and Digital Aesthetics: Counter-culture, Counter-corporate, and Corporeal Examinations in Experimental Digital Art

Abstract This paper contributes a digital-aesthetics approach to relevant new media discourse topics concerning the market, power and control, and identity formation by way of discussing the phenomenon of computer-generated imagery (CGI). Specifically, I will examine experimental digital artists...

By Megan Phipps on 09/02/21 0

Abstract Digital Spatial (Infra)structures: Shaping Possibilities of Migrant Movement Through Data Collection Methods, Audiovisual Surveillance, and Structural Mapping

Keywords – digital immigration methods ■ refugee ■ migrants ■ asylum ■ data collection ■ spatial surveillance ■ architectures of displacement ■ mapping technologies ■ Automated (Spatial) Learning Systems Introduction: Abstract Digital Space as Reductive Space: Data Collection of...

By Megan Phipps on 09/02/21 0

Is Evgeny Morozov’s The Syllabus the real Google antidote?

In the autumn of 2019, technology critic and writer Evgeny Morozov launched the online information-service “The Syllabus”: a curated expert guide to the digital public sphere, containing a constantly updated selection of books, academic articles, podcasts and videos on...

By Sara Getz on 12/08/20 0

Coding queer bias: An artist’s response to the lack of diversity in machine learning

Machine learning technology is known not only to reinforce but even deepen social bias, consequently fostering discrimination and oppressing diversity in multiple ways. Counterintuitively, in “Zizi – Queering the Dataset”, the artist Jake Elwes shows how machine learning can...

By on 12/04/20 0

Deepfake Atmospheres and Digital Crowds

It has not been a good year for crowds. Around the globe, concert halls are silent; stadia, empty. The decibel level of humanity is very likely at a century low. Throughout the world televised sports—a commercial enterprise for whom...

By on 12/04/20 0

PERSONALIZED JOURNALISM: THE USE OF CHATBOTS BY RUSSIAN MEDIA

The Internet is not a vending machine in which you throw a coin and then get what you want (Lovink, 2018). But what if it is? One of the trends that appeared in late 2015 was the development of...

By on 12/03/20 0

Body positivity on the Instagram

The human psyche is shaped by the influence from the society, its cultural influence. There is a strong cultural connection between perfect body weight, “thin ideal’ to a definition of female beauty. This blog post purpose is to show...

By on 11/22/20 0

Call for Applications – MA in New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam

One-year and two-year international Master’s programs in New Media available: MA Media Studies: New Media and Digital Culture (one year, full time) Research MA Media Studies: New Media and Digital Culture (two years, full time) MA New Media and...

By Esther Weltevrede on 11/19/20 0

Public Safety in the Year of Unprecedented Times: An Intervention on Government Sanctioned Covid-19 Data Visualization

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread globally, most governments have launched national ‘corona dashboards’ via public health organisations on which they keep track of the (rising) case numbers and attempt to visualize the spread of the virus in...

By on 10/21/20 0

Nazi Furs F*ck Off: Reclaiming online spaces in the age of political fandom

Culture wars never change. Nazifur metapolitics VS queer furry hegemony. Who will win? Not the fascists.

By Marcantonio Bracale Syrnikov on 10/21/20 0

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 0