Masters of Media

Pay or you are a porn star: The problem with RansomFakes

When in the beginning of 2017 deep fakes of politicians arose, people assumed that the new technology would be a threat to democracy. In a world in which we believe everything we see, the Katie Hill scandal has shown...

By Yentel Boot on 09/24/20 0

What is Feminist-Monarcho-Primitivism?

Introduction A couple of years ago, the prospect of a wealthy TV star owning multiple corporations with no background in politics entering the presidential elections would not have been considered realistic. Fast forward to the end of his mandate,...

By robert baciu on 03/02/20 0

rMGTOW or The New Wave Within The Manosphere

This article is fictional and was made for the course Radical Subcultures Online.Written by:Jasemin UysalJasper van der Heide Another day, another odd internet subculture – as it appears in today’s digital world. “Reflective Men Going Their Own Way,” rMGTOW...

By on 03/02/20 Comments Off

The latest rage on Instagram: creating your own AR face filters and effects

Instagram is a platform that continuously changes, and its latest rage has been the new ability to create your own face filters and effects and share them with other users. The fact that anyone can now create augmented reality...

By on 11/13/19 0

Mirror, mirror on the App Store

Why people are editing their face to perfection, and the dangers that lurk in these ‘subtle’ changes. A genealogy of face editing appsIn 2013 the Oxford English Dictionary chose ‘selfie’ as its word of the year. At around the...

By on 10/24/19 0

YouTube and the LGBT+ Community: Demonitizing Pride

Yonathan Tesfai Introduction How many of us have a YouTube channel? How many of us have even created videos of our own? YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim in 2005 as a simple video...

By on 10/24/19 0

Musical Horizons: Spotify the Secret Nudger

We aim to investigate whether Spotify is impacting our musical horizons by comparing our perceived music taste to Spotify’s suggestions curated by their recommender engines over time. For these purposes, we used data from our four Discover Weekly, Yearly...

By Angélique Jutand on 10/24/19 0

Tinder vs. Bumble: Can You Afford Falling in Love?

From its very beginning, “the Internet has supported social interaction and the search for a soul mate” (Whitty 212). This research explores the dating app phenomenon in-depth, comparing two popular dating apps: Tinder and Bumble. How do Tinder’s affordances...

By Joshua McDonald on 10/24/19 0

Digital Audio Workstations—The Infrastructure of Music Production

Digital Audio Workstations, or DAWs, have become ubiquitous in the landscape of contemporary music production. The development of DAWs has not only revolutionized studio production workflows, but also put the tools to create sophisticated music and sound projects into...

By Filippo Fagnoni on 10/24/19 0

What Does a Feminist Approach to Deepfake Pornography Look Like?

Ida Raffaghello (11903341), Laura Kastalio (12768537), Sanne Kalf (11290196) and Erinne Paisley (12516325)Word count: 2749 Introduction This project focuses on the research question: What does a feminist approach to deepfake pornography look like? Deepfake’s have their historical roots in...

By Sanne Kalf on 10/24/19 0

The Game of Life: A case study of video games as social platforms

Introduction Human connection, the feeling of being accepted or even loved. What does human connection look like in our digital day and age? Dating apps like Tinder are obviously a very modern tool of people reaching each other, but...

By Martijn van Schip on 10/24/19 0

You Cannot Weigh Beauty (but Your Body can be Commercialized)

Introduction In the media women bodies are often portrayed by the preference of thin body types characterized as ideal body types (Martin et al 609). For instance, when looking at the United States, women shown on television tend to...

By Silke Mulder on 10/24/19 0

#SavetheAmazon? – A Case Study of Misinformation across Social Media Reactions to the Amazon Rainforest Fires.

By logging online in August 2019, one is immediately exposed to blazing fires both in the Amazon and across social media. Fires across the Amazon rainforest caused uproar online with many unknowingly re-sharing images that did not depict current...

By Romane Donadini on 10/24/19 0

Unfolding Twitch Vernaculars through Emotes

Twitch is the largest and most popular video game live streaming platform, owning up to 72.2% of total hours watched compared to YouTube, Facebook Gaming, and Mixer (Perez). Not only is Twitch a gaming based streaming platform, but it...

By Boy Singmanee on 10/24/19 0

Dirty Greenwashing: How two apps cash in on the conscious consumer trend

Hashtags like #cleanbeauty, #nontoxicskincare and #greenbeautyproducts are circling popular social media platforms, displaying a recent development of the beauty industry towards cleaner, more ethical products. Rooted in consumers’ “frustration over regulatory oversight of cosmetics and personal care products” (Wanner...

By robert baciu on 10/24/19 0

Show Me How You Fail – Promoting Authenticity and Genuine Connection through Instagram

By: Deirdre Murphy, Nicola Schmitt, Adriana Munteanu, Brenda Scalco What is wrong with me? Why do I not have abs like that influencer? Why did my last post not get as many likes as the one my classmate posted?...

By on 10/24/19 0

“Blue Tick Brigade”: A critique of Twitter’s verification system as a shaper of online self-presentation

By Agustín Ferrari Braun, Eleni Maragkou, Marie-Liesse H, Shivaani Gore Over the course of the past years, politics in Europe and the United States have become increasingly concerned with the nature of online personhood. Only last month, the far-right...

By Eleni Maragkou on 10/24/19 0

Chinese Communist Youth League: Your Next Influencer

Social media platforms are easy to access, to use and could be seamlessly integrated within different cultures and social structures. They are an integral part of how new content is propagated online, hence making them important in political lives...

By Xiaoxuan Ma on 10/24/19 0

Search Engine Comparison for Three Controversial People: Greta Thunberg, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson

Alicja Zak, Elise Olthof, Vânia Ferreira and Zdzisław Heydel Introduction This project, for which we have taken the perspective that “raw data is an oxymoron”, conveyed by Lisa Gitelman, examines the different query results between three search engines: Google,...

By Zdzich Heydel on 10/24/19 0

MOM Over Time: A meta-analysis

Introduction MOM, a weblog belonging to the students and professors of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam, has been online for about fifteen years now. Master of Media blog (MOM), is about new media phenomena and digital culture...

By Sagar Hugar on 10/24/19 0

Data Visualization: A Case Study of Information is Beautiful Awards

By Qianyu Feng, Dania Awin, Marta Espuny, Kirsten Hartman Intro & conceptualization. Living in a data-driven world, data visualization is becoming more and more relevant. Developed from scientific visualization, information visualization gained its popularity in the 2000s with the...

By Marta Espuny on 10/24/19 0

Mapping Shelter

Mapping Shelter proposes a critical new media intervention in the way we think of public space in regards to homeless people. The currently prevalent hostile architecture produces a virulent, toxic environment for marginalized communities. Our concept aims to break...

By Tiede Bart on 10/24/19 0

Old Town Road to Success: How Music Becomes Popular on Spotify

Spotify has become an established phenomenon in our daily routines. How do songs become successful on the platform? Follow us as we explore the (Old Town) road to success.

By Tamar Hellinga on 10/24/19 0

Have You Gone Green? INFRAWARE as a Digital Intervention for Environmental Awareness

INFRAWARE (composed of the words infrastructure, awareness and hard/software) is a browser plug-in that displays how your personal use of technology is deeply entangled with the planet’s resources and the environmental crisis we are currently experiencing. Go green. Paperless...

By on 10/23/19 0