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

Mission Control: The changing boundaries of control and ownership in the world’s biggest crowd funding success.

The latest controversy surrounding the in development game Star Citizen, struck me as illustrative of the pitfalls and complexities of new forms of financing, and how they manifest the sunk cost fallacy in new, unexpected ways. It isn’t just...

By Tim Groot on 09/24/18 Comments Off

A Streamlined Explanation: The Problem with Streaming Games on YouTube

Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg is one of the most popular video game streamers on YouTube with more than 57 million subscribers (Orland, 2017). Because of a racial slur uttered in one of his recent Let’s Play videos, PewDiePie faced a...

By Ayse B. Tosun on 10/25/17 Comments Off

In The Filter Bubble: How algorithms customize our access to information

‘Mark Zuckerberg promises to do more about the circulation of fake news on Facebook’ Dutch news website nu.nl said on 13 November 2016. This isn’t the first time Facebook has been criticized lately. The social media network has been...

By Stefani Mans on 11/13/16 Comments Off

Gab.ai: Freedom of (conservative) speech?

A few weeks ago a Norwegian journalist posted the Pullitzer Prize-winning ‘napalm girl’ photograph on Facebook. But instead of founding the intended discussion, he found his account suspended and the picture removed. The picture contained nudity, which may not...

By Joep Voorn on 09/22/16 Comments Off

#CopyPaste – The battle between Instagram and Snapchat

There is a battle going on between Instagram and Snapchat.. but who is on the winning hand? A-team Instagram is a mobile phone photo-sharing, video-sharing and social network service. It enables users to take pictures and videos and...

By Arabella Memdouh on 09/21/16 Comments Off

They tried to make me go to Talkspace I said, “no,no,no”.

Introducing Talkspace, the budding therapy app that claims to accommodate the ‘on demand’, ‘on the go’, ‘in the know’ culture. Therapy in the modern world. Ironically the need to be mindful has become an inevitable trend, digital...

By Kyra Teklu on 09/17/15 Comments Off

Facebook Jumps on the Bandwagon!

Facebook Notes has been long forgotten over the years as the company’s main focus was to distinguish the platform from other what seemed similar ones in the past days. Today the company (Facebook) seems to have grasped the importance of...

By Ash Monzer on 09/16/15 Comments Off

Impossible: new possibilities

Impossible is a social network website launched in 2014. Impossible is trying to make the impossible possible by acting as a social networking hub for good deeds. In order to achieve this, Impossible provides a platform that connects people with...

By Gina on 11/07/14 Comments Off

Training Wheels

As one of the cultural capitals of Europe, thousands of international students (2,000 at the University of Amsterdam alone), new residents and tourists convene in Amsterdam every year. Unfortunately, not everyone who comes to Amsterdam has the typical Dutch...

By Auke Akkerman on 10/17/14 Comments Off

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

Understanding New Media – a quick overview

By exploring the intersection of computing science, humanities and visual and performing art, new media is exploring its own path towards a science status. If the new media is affecting the way society behaves, we should try to...

By Caio Domingues on 09/08/14 Comments Off

We Are Dread: A Review of the Dread Exhibition at De Hallen, Haarlem

By Lani Shadduck & Lucy Chinen “Dread trembles in my pocket. Dread chirps incessantly. Dread flashes and bounces. Dread summons me a hundred times a day to pay attention to my phone or my laptop, and stiffening...

By Lani Shadduck on 10/09/13 Comments Off

Facebook enhances the brand image in consumer minds

Facebook is becoming a marketing tool involved in the 2.0. strategy, itself involved in the global brand’s strategy. The 2.0. strategy draws on social networks, as a marketing medium, and has a bidirectional communication that calls for creativity, rigor and...

By V Weydert on 09/08/13 Comments Off

Breaching Experiments on Facebook

Breaching Experiments Two recent events on my Facebook newsfeed made me think of breaching experiments, and what their possible value would be within the context of research on (relatively) new online social environments. The breaching experiment is a research...

By Alain on 10/19/12 Comments Off

Hey Zuckerberg! You’re late!

One particular phenomenon I’ve always been very interested in is Virtual Reality (VR); a technology created in the 90s that places the user in an artificial environment generated by a computer. The goal of VR is to create a...

By Robert Silvis on 10/19/12 Comments Off

iPhone 5: The Ultimate User Review

Device reviews are not really the subject of choice on this blog. However, measuring the general sentiment on social networks towards a certain gadget can be quite insightful. In this post I will be examining the iPhone 5 through...

By Bozhan Chipev on 10/18/12 Comments Off

Underskog.no: an example of a private online community

Underskog (directly translated from Norwegian meaning “undergrowth” or “underwoods”) is a phenomenon I heard about even before moving to Oslo. Sometime in 2008, my Norwegian friend, being only too happy about being a part of it all, described with...

By Jules Mataly on 09/11/12 1

Soundcheck: Independent Bands in the Age of Online Music Marketing

Ever since “digitization” took over “globalization” as the biggest phenomenon in the modern world, there’s very little that remains inaccessible – art, dance, films, world news, sports, music and what will you – everything is usually not more than...

By Audrika Rakshit on 09/09/12 Comments Off

Gigapixel photography – a new vantage point

If you enjoy roaming the virtual streets of Google Maps’ Street View, take a deep breath and dive into the unique visual experience of “Gigapixel photography”. A gigapixel photograph is, mathematically speaking, an image that consists of one billion...

By Bozhan Chipev on 09/08/12 1

Some word of advice to Mr. Zuckerberg

I am fairly skilled with computers. I develop websites and quite often help other people out with their computer problems. But finding things in the privacy settings within Facebook always costs me a little too much time and effort....

By Alain on 08/30/12 Comments Off

Facebook 126 : 10 NING. Lessons learnt

When creating an online community on NING platform for newcomers in Amsterdam as part of our Masters of Media project, me and my colleagues had very ambitious plans about attracting vast amount of users to join Yoursterdam community. However...

By Mzia Kupunia on 11/01/11 Comments Off

Memes as a tool

A very powerful tool would be to be able to release information inside social networks that would go viral and be incorporated to pop culture by becoming a meme. There are many factors that influence the destiny of a...

By Mario Gesteira on 10/23/11 Comments Off

Richard Stallman: Don’t use Facebook

An interview with the GNU founder about issues with user-generated content in social networks.

By Andrian Georgiev on 10/14/11 3

Geomium – Live local, live social?

I never found geolocation-based social networks and apps any helpful. Geomium proves once more that my skepticism is not groundless. Geomium a location-based social website which, according to its creators is a “community for people to share and experience...

By Mzia Kupunia on 10/11/11 Comments Off