Masters of Media

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 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

“Stop licking the boots and start marching them” – An exploratory research proposal into peer-to-peer political discussion on TikTok

by: Samuel Vitikainen, Max Buzzell, Loulou de Regt, Lotte Timmermans For people over 24, and some people under 24 too, TikTok constitutes a phenomenon as alien as Narnia: a strange world where the rules are difficult to understand. To...

By Max Buzzell on 10/21/20 Comments Off

Conspiracy theories in the digital world – How does the digital language surrounding QAnon conspiracy theories differ on platforms such as Twitter and Reddit through the lens of “Face” and “Mask” culture?

Authors: Christian R. , Doortje N., Lara., Sara N. Conspiracy theories are in no way something new and have, in fact, already been circulating and believed for a long time, some of the most famous examples being the conspiracy...

By Lara R. on 10/21/20 Comments Off

Artland: A platform-analysis on the democratization of the art world fostered by an online art market

In a more and more digitalized world and with the rise of COVID-19, cultural institutions like galleries and museums have been constrained to explore alternative digital areas, and so does the art market. But how does this digitalization of...

By on 10/21/20 Comments Off

Feminist Movements in the Age of Social Media: Crossing the Thin Line Between Authentic and Performative Activism

By Irem Ergul, Emma Fuchsová, Alexandra Hagedorn 1. Introduction Activism is conventionally seen as a form of public protest, that is a rally, public meeting or a march (Anderson and Herr 20). In this day and age, however, activism...

By Alexandra Hagedorn on 10/21/20 Comments Off

BETWEEN ZOOM-MEETINGS AND SKYPE CALLS: HOW VIDEO CONFERENCING HAS BECOME THE SOCIAL GLUE OF A PANDEMIC

Communication has changed dramatically since COVID-19 spread. Many countries have adopted different degrees of quarantine and remote work is on the rise. Social contact has been dramatically shortened. In the following lines, a discussion will be developed on the...

By Sandy Rafaela Krambeck on 10/21/20 Comments Off

GIF me a Fan: An analysis on fan-group creative collective culture through the use of GIFs

By Dania Elahi, Lisa Lan, Nahal Sheikh Introduction Who doesn’t love GIFs? There is something magical about this looping animation clip that grabs our attention and makes us all addicted. This visual communication tool has become the ubiquitous visual...

By on 10/21/20 Comments Off

Unearthing Spotify: the hidden world behind everyday plays

Do you listen to music every day? Do you remember how you listened to music a few years ago? Facing the collapsed traditional music industry, Spotify is the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service, with almost 300 million...

By on 10/21/20 Comments Off

Can you change the world with a homemade DeepFake?

Kenza Sabri (kenzasabri5@gmail.com) Zuzanna Kędzia (zuzanna.k0987@gmail.com) Daria Kochetkova (daria.kochetkova.08@gmail.com) “At the most basic level, deepfakes are lies disguised to look like truth. If we take them as truth or evidence, we can easily make false conclusions with potentially disastrous...

By Kenza Sabri on 10/21/20 Comments Off

Zoom-ing in on Online Education: Digital Infrastructure as an Extension

The year 2020 has brought about significant change in almost all areas of life as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. Video conferencing services, such as Zoom, have become a perceived replacement for workspaces, social interaction environments, and even...

By on 10/20/20 Comments Off

From art to ethical design; Studio Roosegaarde’s quest for a sustainable and aesthetic future

The clock is ticking: sea levels and temperatures are rising, plastic is building up, and animals face extinction. What if art can be the activator for change?

By Victor Loye on 10/20/20 Comments Off

Contact tracing: an aid for humanity or a Trojan horse of surveillance?

By Sophie Letschert (smwletschert@outlook.com), Caroline Stanislawczyk (claarecaro@gmail.com) and Karlygash Nurdilda (k.nurdilda@gmail.com) Introduction Can contact tracing apps become the ultimate flooding gates for private data to flow into the hands of the third parties, bringing out health surveillance en masse?...

By Karlygash Nurdilda on 10/20/20 Comments Off

How “Trump COVID-19” Provides Different Search Results on Google and Baidu?

If you search “Trump COVID-19" on Google and Baidu, what do you think the search results will look like? Are they almost the same or completely different? This blog post will show you the answer.

By Yingying Chen on 10/20/20 Comments Off

The Dilemma of Prisoners on TikTok: An Analysis of the Implications of Dark Subcultures Online

By Alejandra O’Connor (oconnorale@hotmail.com), Li Shen (lshen141@gmail.com), Niall Manley (niall.m76@gmail.com) Abstract This research study analyses the content of previously-seen, crime-related online content – such as Tumblr’s True Crime Community – exploring the implications of this type of content for...

By Li Shen on 10/20/20 Comments Off

Only[Adult]Fans: Affording Digital Sex Work

In a time when many were either let go from their job or suffering from lack of human contact during isolation, one online service which mends both of these issues in differing ways – for reasons we will investigate further...

By on 10/20/20 Comments Off

TERF Wars

Oscar Fitzpatrick, Caitlin Harzem, Gerry LaBarbera Abstract: There was a time when speaking of JK Rowling would primarily include topics regarding children’s literature, or specifically the Harry Potter franchise. In 2020 much of the debate surrounding JK Rowling is...

By on 10/20/20 Comments Off

Censorship creates discourse: the implications of banning political advertising

Ayushi Arora (13237748, arora.ayushi@gmail.com) Thomas Ba (13286544, thomas.ba.7@outlook.it) Maurice Dharampal (10439250, maurice.dharampal@student.uva.nl) Alex Soete (13208918, alex.soete@gmail.com) Introduction Is free-speech under attack? Founder and CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg has recently joined the head of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, in the...

By on 10/20/20 Comments Off

Video Games as Infrastructures of Resistance

This blog post covers a heavily understudied area of digital activism: online video games. With people in self-isolation and trapped in their houses for over half a year now, it is crucial that we recognize the creative ways people...

By Frederikke Christiansen on 10/19/20 Comments Off

Fighting Fire with Fire: Can AI Prevent Calamitous Misuse of Deepfake?

Members: Neelesh Vasistha — neelesh.vasistha@student.uva.nl Sarah Burkhardt — sarah.burkhardt@student.uva.nl Wen Li — wen.li@student.uva.nl Sofia Rastelli — sofia.rastelli@student.uva.nl It is late evening on November 2nd, the night before U.S citizens will vote in a pivotal election. You’re sitting at home,...

By Neelesh Vasistha on 10/16/20 Comments Off

Algorithmic Culture and Big Data: Spotify’s recommendation algorithm

Have you ever listened to music on Spotify and wondered how it is possible that the recommended music perfectly suits your personal taste and sometimes even introduces you to music you didn’t even know you enjoy? Most people don’t...

By on 09/28/20 Comments Off

Draw me like one of your French boys

Activism against online sexual harassment As the digital era has made former consumers into prosumers; creating, editing, liking, disliking, saving and sharing content around the clock, life’s perks and detriments have mutated into the online realm too. With the...

By Christian Ran on 09/28/20 Comments Off