Coffee: Just an Energy Boost or a Social Atmosphere?
Coffee has been at the centre of our lives in one form or another since the 15th century. When you think about coffee, many things probably come to mind. We use it to wake us up, to give us...
Tweeting politics – preaching to the choir?
In May 2012, the French chose Francois Hollande, the Socialist Party candidate, to replace Nicolas Sarkozy as president. François Mitterand lost power in 1995, and since then the government majority had been right wing. After his defeat, Nicolas Sarkozy...
Captives of the Social: Facebook and Digital Pantopticism
As a network, the Web is usually connoted as an open-ended, anarchic and non-hierarchic environment. Compared to previous modes of organization, its distributed nature is considered an improvement over centralized and decentralized one-to-many communications and productions. (( Alexander R....
Obama vs. Romney: analyzing the image of the future First Lady
The predicted outcome of the upcoming 2012 U.S. presidential elections is still very much subject to fluctuation. Polls are still changing on a daily basis, with the difference between predicted votes for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney only a...
Big Think: The Importance of Yesterday
Archiving online can be a tricky undertaking. On the one hand we can’t get enough of it when it comes to news and scholarly articles or any other form of factual information but on the other hand there...
Social media in Iraq: in search of the truth
Like elsewhere in the Middle East, in Iraq social media is a fast growing way of communication. Contrary to the situation ten years ago, the use of mobile phone is nowadays nearly universal. Internet cafes are booming and the...
Do Not Disturb – Smartphone Etiquette
We’ve all been there. That moment that you wake up, I’m sorry no – have a small panic attack, because your (social) network decides that three o’clock in the morning is the best moment for: emailing, telling you things...
Warning! Your message may turn against you!
The context: Last week witnessed a turmoil on the Romanian online media regarding an advertising campaign. The latter belongs to pharmaceutical company Secom Romania and introduces Neuro Optimzer, a treatment based on pills that improves certain brain functions for...
Go minimalist with your social media?
Why minimalist approach steps into our online life and what is the level of its effectiveness? We all have heard about the popular minimalist approach by now. Most of us have probably seen reportage on TV, or YouTube about some new-born...
Sleek – What does the website’s structure reveal?
Sleek is an internationally distributed fashion and art magazine, introducing contemporary art and fashion issues in a thematically manner. Since 2005, the paper edition is published quarterly in Berlin, but because of its worldwide audience Sleek is only available...
iPhone 5: The Ultimate User Review
Device reviews are not really the subject of choice on this blog. However, measuring the general sentiment on social networks towards a certain gadget can be quite insightful. In this post I will be examining the iPhone 5 through...
MSDOS and floppy disks are alive and well (in Canadian curriculum)
In the short six years since I left high school, a lot has changed. Facebook and smartphones are now transforming the lives of younger generations . In light of the upcoming Media Literacy Week in Canada (November 5-9), I...
Facebook + Performance Society = ?
Last week, the documentary ‘Nooit Meer Slapen’ (No more Sleeping) was broadcasted on the Dutch television. The documentary stated that at 3 o’clock in the night, over 1 million Dutch citizens are wide-awake. ‘At home, night rest is becoming...
CtrlC/CtrlV: News presentation across different online platforms
New technology is changing our society at full pace. Not only does it change the way people communicate with each other, it also impacts the way information is communicated to society. People are not satisfied with reading the morning...
When the audience becomes the hero…
Annette Mees on theater and transmedia Annette Mees is director and co-artistic director of Coney in England. By using various media she creates special plays in which the audience is the hero: “The experience starts when you first hear...
The Lomography phenomenon
Lomography is the modern term for the type of film photographs taken with analog, simple cameras, initially produced by Lomo PLC in Sankt Petersburg in the ‘80s. In 1991, two students from Austria discovered a compact enigmatic camera which allowed...
![[Interview] Juul Spee of Zesbaans: Digital Media Designer](https://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/wp-content/themes/theme_mom_2012/timthumb.php?src=https://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/zesbaans_zwart1.png&w=258&h=80&zc=1&q=100 "[Interview] Juul Spee of Zesbaans: Digital Media Designer")
[Interview] Juul Spee of Zesbaans: Digital Media Designer
Zesbaans is a digital media and design collective that experiments with media and interactivity. Zesbaans (Dutch for a six-laned highway) has been based in Utrecht, the Netherlands, since its founding in 2007 where it has been involved with projects...
Photoshop facilitates a new generation of image-makers and why it matters
There within most personal computers are applications that resolve the divide between creative thought and creative application. Today, there are hundreds of such applications but few have embedded themselves so deep in the digital era of creative production such...
Memeification of the News
Internet memes (specifically image memes) have taken the role of a media format for civic journalism, ever evolving and reproducing cultural/political concerns which reflect our social condition. As an amalgamated entity, memes are constantly integrating themselves within social platforms...
Really that Bad? A case study on the fifth best-selling album of all time
The Atlantic recently published a stimulating critique in which music journalist John Murph questions the real legacy of Michael Jackson’s seventh and hailed studio album Bad.
Electives 2012: Google Trends as a Modern Poll System
I guess the Dutch population was quite surprised by the results of the 2012 elective campaigns. Although Emile Roemer from the socialist party (SP) and Mark Rutte from the liberal party (VVD) were the major players at the beginning of...
Interview: Laurentiu Pop (HTTPool) on Digital Advertising
Laurentiu Pop is Managing Director for HTTPool Romania (part of the HTTPool Worldwide network) and has been passionate about digital for nine years. He started as a junior ARBOmedia, one of the biggest adnetworks in the country. Then he...
Readers as users – an analysis of the guardians website
Considering that we have been publishing in print for more than 500 years, online publishing that has a history not much longer than a decade can only be seen as being in it´s very early stages. Newspapers that has...
School is Cool: iPad’s in classrooms
“It was absurd (…) that American classrooms were still based on teachers standing at a board and using textbooks. All books, learning materials, and assessments should be digital and interactive (…).” (Isaacson,2011, p. 264) This is a quote from...