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

Sciencemappr: Some dataset related implications

In my previous blogpost I posed some questions concerning the visualization project I am currently working on. The purpose of the project is to visualize global scientific interest for human rights issues and the emergence and disappearance of scientific...

By Xander Stolwijk on 05/09/11 Comments Off

Visual (for) thought: why data visualization should be used more in the classroom?

“Data is the new oil? No: Data is the new soil.”- David McCandless, TEDGlobal, 2010 Whatever data is, one thing is sure: we cannot overlook them. Since we live in the Big Data era,as Jaimy and Ana analyze in...

By Eva Anagnostaki on 03/20/13 Comments Off

Twingly: Mapping the Global Blogosphere in Real-Time

I was kind of amazed to see this real-time visualization of the a selected portion of the blogosphere. It is ‘marketed’ as a screensaver, but has much more potential than just a screenfiller when you’re away from your screen....

By Twan Eikelenboom on 04/05/07 Comments Off

‘Masters of Media’ on the Web

According to the 2010 call for New Media MA applications, the Masters of Media blog has been nominated for a best education blog award and enjoys a broad, global readership. Masters of Media‘s international prestige and academic acclaim undoubtedly...

By Catalina Iorga on 09/13/10 Comments Off

Seminar: CBS Data Visualization – Data Journalism

– Last Friday the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) held an interactive data visualization day “Datavisualisatie in beweging” initiated by web designer Eugene Tjoa and Bas Broekhuizen. With this seminar several data visualization professionals were invited, to present their work in...

By Fenneke Mink on 02/07/12 Comments Off

Listen to This: Don’t Miss the Sound to Convey Data!

Aristotle wrote in his work Metaphysics that sight is man’s most significant sense. “We understand because we see”, Alberto Cairo similarly states in his book The functional Art. Philosophy has tried to understand sight and the relation between images and human perception since the beginning...

By Ariadna Matamoros Fernandez on 04/15/14 Comments Off

Mondrian in the age of Information Visualization.

Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) started painting his artworks in the style of the Amsterdam Academy. He made dark realistic landscapes and later in his carer he painted more lighter paintings when he evolved towards De Stijl. From the...

By Fenneke Mink on 04/20/11 Comments Off

“Color is difficult”

Color in information visualization is difficult because of the way our brains work, how we perceive color and cultural factors. But rather than discouraging to use color, this blogpost is for overcoming these difficulties and to deploy color intelligently.

By Alain on 03/21/13 Comments Off

Data Journalism in the Netherlands

Tuesday the 6th of December 2011. Trending topic on Twitter is #nederlandvanboven. Non-Dutch users are confused, what is this hashtag so many people are tweeting about? It is the television documentary Nederland van Boven (the Netherlands from above), inspired...

By Annet Bos on 03/20/12 Comments Off

Nothing to Represent Something

On the 6th of September 2014 the conference “Visualise it!” took place in Utrecht. One of the speakers was Andy Kirk, his presentation ‘The Design of Nothing‘ focused on the question: ‘what...

By Dominique Verschragen on 09/11/14 Comments Off

The New Cartographers #1, Pedro M Cruz

Pedro M Cruz created recently a Project related with the visualization of Traffic in Lisbon. His project lets you see the city waking up through the motion of traffic on its main arteries and fading away towards the end...

By Margarida Fonseca on 05/16/10 Comments Off

Getting data, sharing data and raising political awareness.

Using vision to amplify cognition. According to the Light Switch Theory, vision appeared on Earth around 543 million years ago and triggered the Cambrian explosion (evolution’s Big Bang). Before that none of the living entities could see and relied to...

By olga paraskevopoulou on 05/07/11 Comments Off

Where should I live? Visualizing well-being in different countries

Raw data on its own does not contain much meaning. It presents values of quantitative or qualitative variables that are results of measurements and computations. Data needs some context so that it can be analyzed and visualized in...

By Charlotte on 03/13/13 Comments Off

Show, Give and Hack: A Call for Open Data

I’ve got a confession to make. When I’m watching the news and the newscaster starts talking about the national and global economy, I find it hard to maintain interest. Of course, this is due to the fact that it...

By Bree Tahapary on 03/22/12 Comments Off

Too long; Didn´t watch

We all know the feeling – there are just not enough hours in the day to attend to all the interesting things out there. There might now be a solution for at least one aspect of the dilemma, a solution, that people...

By Alina Niemann on 09/16/15 Comments Off

Information visualization within Web 2.0: Google Flu Trends and Foursquare

Every day, users on the Web generate large amounts of data. At the same time it seems that the use of information visualization has increased with the rise of Web 2.0. The term information visualization is defined by Stuart...

By Ferdy Looijen on 03/06/13 Comments Off

The Building Blocks of Information Visualization

Thursday Christian Behrens and Yuri Engelhardt did a workshop on the Universiteit van Amsterdam on the building blocks of information visualization. Christian Behrens created out of his master thesis on designing pattern taxonomy for the field of data visualization and information design,...

By Marijn de Vries Hoogerwerff on 10/03/08 Comments Off

Using open data to analyse patterns

In the last few years data has become more and more important. Government agencies and commercial companies create and collect a lot of data. On the internet users are increasingly generating data through clicks, likes and other metrics such...

By Joram Binsbergen on 09/11/13 Comments Off

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 Comments Off

Visualizing what is happening

Going through an older post in the MoM’s blog referring to Walter’s Ong book “Orality and Literacy”, I discovered a term referring to a new “hybrid form” of culture that has spread on the internet: The Secondary Orality. The term is emphasizing...

By olga paraskevopoulou on 04/21/11 Comments Off

Visualizing for different purposes

In my previous blogpost, I finished with the statement that there are many other authors (besides Manuel Lima) that talk about artistic ways of information visualization and the distinctions these cultural practices have from traditional (conventional academic) information visualization....

By Sander Leegwater on 05/18/10 Comments Off

The Innocence of Infographics

Interactive infographics are becoming a major trend in data visualization. Infographics are a relatively new way to simplify complex stories, data and findings. They can be very useful in organizing a large amount of information in an easy...

By Sander van Haren on 10/08/13 Comments Off

Show Me the Data 2012

Show me the data is an annual conference about data visualizations, developed by multidisciplinary students of the master New Media and Computer Science at the UvA and Editorial Design at the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design...

By Stijnie Thuijs on 03/26/12 Comments Off

Tracking the Stars: Co-star and the Creation of the Digital Celestial

Ayoub Samadi Introduction A centuries old practice clad in contemporary systems of information processing. For millenia, astrology has been engulfed in the depths of time and rationality and has not only until recently began to regain the reverence it...

By on 10/03/21 Comments Off