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

The Death of the Meme: Article 13 and what this means for the internet

On the 12th of September 2018, the European Parliament voted on a version of an EU copyright directive, namely the The European Union Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Two articles are currently stirring up controversy, one...

By Elise van der Linde on 09/24/18 Comments Off

Who controls your voice controlled world?

One of the latest trends in the tech world is the development of the smart digital voice assistant. It was first popularized by iPhone’s Siri, and now companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft are developing software and hardware technology...

By Aleksandra Straczek on 10/24/17 Comments Off

Do Not Track: together let’s track Big Brother

After four years of negotiations, an agreement was reached on September the 8th over data protection on the internet between the United States and the European Union. Many privacy violations scandals later (i.e.: Edward Snowden’s revelations on the NSA’s...

By Mathilde Grenod on 09/15/15 Comments Off

Introducing Toosheh: The new mesh network application that tries to tackle the problem of information controls inside Iran

Branded as a little blue bundle, the new android application developed by the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California is a slight play on words. Toosheh which in Persian means baggage, endeavours to connect Iranian’s through what...

By Mahsa Alimardani on 09/16/14 1

Spread the Word: Fund Clean Oceans

96 days ago, a crowdfunding project started and was widely spread through Facebook, Linked-In and other social media. It all started with the 17-year old Boyan who had a plan. A plan to do something about the plastic pollution...

By Arla Krikke on 09/09/14 Comments Off

MOOCs – A driver for innovation in teaching?

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) – free and open online courses offered by worldwide leading Universities have attracted much attention (one might even say social panic) amongst higher education (HE) circles and beyond since their rising popularity in 2012. For many here there was not only aseemingly radically...

By Sebastian Bertoli on 09/08/14 Comments Off

Connectivity: friend or foe?

According to a news item, Facebook is willing to spend billions on connecting the world to the internet. This might come as a surprise since Facebook isn’t an internetprovider but a social media platform, but will be one of...

By Kyrsha Verweij on 09/08/14 Comments Off

#VemPraRua

How the use of Social Media platforms can mobilize a whole nation and transform the history of a country “Vem pra rua, porque a rua é a maior arquibancada do Brasil” The sentence above was extracted from the song...

By Gustavo López on 09/12/13 3

The Internet is now built on mass surveillance

Brought to light in recent months, the Edward Snowden-powered NSA leaks have publicized the wholesale spying efforts by US and UK intelligence agencies that undermine the very fabric of the Internet – turning it into a vast surveillance program...

By Nicholas Vieira on 09/09/13 1

From Disabilities to New Abilities

Have you ever thought about how visually impaired or hearing-impaired follow TV shows? Since television is taken for granted a long time ago, we usually ignore the fact that, for some, watching television can be indeed hard. Following TV...

By Gizem Ezgi Akdag on 09/08/13 Comments Off

Social network is aging. What’s next?

We’re hopelessly addicted to social platforms as if it would be still revolutionary in our lives but is anyone thinking about it to be aging? People start getting bored with social networks because it does change in the way...

By Indre Lauciute on 09/08/13 Comments Off

Give me cash, I will give you love

Today online dating isn’t such a big deal anymore; men and women from al ages and different backgrounds use the Internet weekly in the hope to form and maintain a romantic relationship. The reason why the Internet gained popularity...

By Sasha Wood on 09/09/12 1

Have we forgotten, WE are the internet

The internet beast “What technology wants”, a tellingly title of the most recent book by Kevin Kelly. As if technology is an autonomous living being possessing an own will. Although Kelly is more nuanced than this (for a book...

By Alain on 09/08/12 2

WikiLeaks or We Keep Leaks?

On the 17th of June in 1972, 5 men got caught while attempting to infiltrate the democratic headquarters located at the Watergate hotel in Washington. Their objective was the placement of electronic listening devices to monitor the meeting hosted...

By Robert Silvis on 09/08/12 1

Marcelo Somers: Advertising works when it can scale

The Syndicate is a new breed of an ad network. Among its members are Khoi Vinh, former NYTimes.com design director, Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, and Horace Dediu, mobile computing analyst.

By Andrian Georgiev on 12/09/11 Comments Off

The Cyber Cafe Is Dead. Long Live The Cyber Cafe!

In the Western world, cyber cafes are nearing the point of total extinction, but less protected as say, pandas. However, many seem to find a new lease on life in the various developing – soon to take over Total...

By Daniel de Zeeuw on 10/31/11 Comments Off

2012: An Offline Year for Bram van Montfoort

Bram van Montfoort (’87) is an online man. He once started with a dial-up internet connection and egg timer to keep track of ‘online’-time, nowadays Bram is equipped with iPad, PC and mobile phone and can be followed on...

By Leander Roet on 10/27/11 3

An interview with Jerom Fischer

Some say this is the best time for artist and creative entrepreneurs. Others think the creative industries are coming to an end thanks to the negative impact of the Internet on industries like the music industry. Since I’m interested...

By Sebastiaan Smink on 10/25/11 Comments Off

What happens to your online data when you die?

Not that you'd care, but it’s messy.

By Andrian Georgiev on 10/02/11 Comments Off

Book Review: The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov

In his book ‘The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World’ Belarusian-born writer Evgeny Morozov finely describes and critiques a delusion he calls cyber-utopianism: the believe that online communication technologies have the power to liberate, democratize. Many people...

By Sebastiaan Smink on 09/22/11 2