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

Camarilla: New Concept of Social Media or Not?

Is it not cool to have so many friends on social media anymore? Do social media undermine the definition of friendship? Are we ever more concerned about our privacy? These questions are provoked by the emergence of a social...

By Mari Fujiwara on 09/25/17 Comments Off

The Social Catwork

The project The Social Catwork is based on the initial concept of Facebook, where the users were asked to pick which person out of two pictures they find more attractive. Our version, however, gives the user a choice of...

By Ineke Scheffers on 10/23/12 Comments Off

Be Careful whom You Friend. A Life of a Fake Facebook Profile.

Eva Janssen was born on the 15th October 2012. Being already 24 years old, she attends the University of Amsterdam. She is quite a usual girl. She listens to The Beatles and Moby, she watches Friends while eating Nutella...

By Sonia Kolasinska on 10/23/12 Comments Off

You ‘like’, you pay! – Do Social Network Services Users Consciously and Willingly Give Up Their Right for Privacy?

Facebook faces more and more scrutiny over its user privacy issues, but do people willingly trade privacy as a commodity for using Social Network Services (SNSs)? Would they prefer to pay a certain fee in order to prevent surveillance...

By Andrei Florian on 10/08/11 Comments Off

Challenging Time: Google Plus and Facebook Timeline

‘The most fun thing about going out is when you run into friends unexpectedly. With Hangouts, this sort of meeting becomes possible on the internet for the first time. Let your friends know you’re available and find out who...

By Stijnie Thuijs on 10/04/11 Comments Off

Social Media: My concerns and why I quit Facebook

When I was just a little boy, there wasn’t yet a personal computer. Although we had a game computer (a Commodor 64), my brothers and I preferred to play with LEGO or Playmobile and we went very often outside...

By Maarten Jansen on 10/04/11 Comments Off

Researching online music networking in the Web 2.0 era: Soundcloud and the demise of MySpace

With the current steady rise of social networking sites, it is by all means an important question to ask how to research these in the field of new media studies. Furthermore, a lot of these sites offer services destined...

By Hans Terpstra on 09/28/10 Comments Off

Does Facebook Rule? Ideas For The Future.

Facebook is everywhere. It connects 500 millions of people around the world. No doubts, it is an effect of purposeful endeavours of those who stay behind the success of the platform. It is becoming more and more interconnected into...

By Michal Kielbasa on 09/26/10 Comments Off

Dissemination of Social Network Sites

Social network sites are very popular within media studies. They are common research subjects. How often did you refer to Facebook or LinkedIn when writing an article? There is not one way to explore the universe of social media....

By Chris Hoogeveen on 09/23/10 Comments Off

The Complexity of the Online Self

Cyberspace can both be considered a communication medium for “real” people and a place for people to take on different roles, for experimenting with different ways of behaviour, maybe even different identities. This possible online identity experimentation could change...

By Rutger van den Berg on 10/14/09 Comments Off

Does making money make a SNS unpopular?

My gut feeling tells me that Social Network Services (SNS) do not exist because they are so great. They always provide for a basic need they fulfill, which for me has been to start a group in which I...

By Ramses Petronia on 10/08/09 Comments Off

Txtng news in 140 characters

It is no news to us that text messaging is morphing our modern culture. In 2008, the British scholar David Crystal has observed how text messages in mobile phones and IMs can influence our live technologically, sociologically, psychologically, commercially, and...

By Yu-Fen Chen on 10/05/09 Comments Off

Collective writing: How literature is changed by the new medium

There are many variants of social networking sites. Some of them are based on an analog medium. The use of the Internet and the computer has resulted in that the digital medium differs from the analog medium. Examples of...

By Suzanne Schram on 10/04/09 Comments Off

Social Networking Sites: to type oneself into being

“Typing oneself into being” sounds like a great way to summarize a person’s motive for online exposure. When you’re not online, you seem to be nowhere at all. Creating an online profile on a social networking site is an...

By Rutger van den Berg on 10/01/09 Comments Off

The Social Paradox of Social Network Sites

When I was young, although with 26 years of age I’m not old, so let’s say; when I was younger, most of the time when I wasn’t in school I was playing with my friends on the streets. Playing...

By Harro Heijboer on 09/30/09 Comments Off

Time to get social online, but why?

Why do we socialize online? Because “human beings are social animals,” Aristotle would say so.

By Yu-Fen Chen on 09/28/09 Comments Off

Social Networking Sites (SNS); are we helping in the shrinking of our own privacy?

Social Networking Sites (SNS) are commonly known to just about everyone nowadays or so it seems, who doesn’t at least own a FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Hyves, Ning account or combinations of these and many, many others! But do you...

By Sander Leegwater on 09/28/09 Comments Off

Social Network Sites – friend/Friend/defriend

Social Network Sites (SNSs), like Facebook and Hyves, are focused on ‘Friendship’. As SNSs get more mainstream and infiltrate in our everyday lives the use of the term ‘Friendship’ becomes more problematic within the SNSs discourse. Using the labels...

By Kimberley Spreeuwenberg on 09/27/09 2

A Review of: Mapping E-Culture, Navigating E-Culture, Walled Garden

Mapping E-Culture, Navigating E-Culture, and Walled Garden, the three books coming along in a box, picture the general look of the electronic scenery we are in through the decade. Besides interviews to several key influencers, research essays and some...

By Sisi Yu on 09/17/09 Comments Off

Be Careful whom You Friend. A Life of a Fake Facebook Profile.

The Complexity of the Online Self

Facebook in a Socio-Cultural Aspect

SNS: Between Diversity & Online Cultural Schizophrenia