Masters of Media

Social networking sites are giving their users the opportunity to influence the attraction they exert on others by creating an online profile and a virtual identity that may in some cases strongly differ from real life. Through the use of social networking sites, users can not only show a multi-faced image of their identity, but they can also play…

It’s official: Wikipedia has jumped on the social media bandwagon. The online encyclopedia recently announced the introduction of an article feedback tool currently being tested on 400 articles pertaining to the WikiProject on United States Public Policy. (Melanson, 23 September 2010). What are the potential consequences of the tool’s mass implementation? I will try to answer…

I was pleasantly surprised when a few weeks ago I received an invitation for the Virtueel Platform Hot 100. Present at this event are 100 alumni from different media and art institutions with the goal to get in touch with each other. The invitation was quite flattering and inspiring:“The HOT100 are the creme de la creme of the Dutch art academies, universities and universities of applied sciences in the fields of art, design, theory, communication or development skills related to e-culture

Nowadays the privacy issue on Social Network Sites (SNS) is often being discussed. We all seem very concerned about whether the information we share on sites like Facebook are being shared with others, without our permission. We now are aware of the fact that our user profiles on Facebook, Hyves, MySpace etc. are being shared for advertising profits of third…

When signing up for a service or installing software, have you ever read privacy policies that you had ‘to agree’ with in order to continue? You surely agreed, but what you have agreed with is probably a mystery. The fact that consumers deliberately do not pay attention or put effort in understanding privacy policies is a common idea as Stevenson (2005) shows in his ‘Whatever Button’ project. When the privacy policies show up ready to be check by the consumer, one simply scrolls down without looking, or clicks through the ‘I agree’, ‘I confirm’, ‘I accept’ button in order to receive the product as soon as possible: throughout the interactions in between, one would say; whatever. Companies deliberately make privacy policies not a Shakespearean-like poet to read, but rather a humongous text filled with jargon that even a law professional thinks is a horrible grind to understand. In this way, data about the body is increasingly flowing away from the individual it belongs to, resulting in some interesting developments such as new ways of perceiving identity.

Are computers designed to be instructed by us or are we just living under their reign? In The Cultural Logic of Computation, David Golumbia, University of Virginia media scholar offers us an analytical perspective with a glance at modern history of human beings to be able to perceive the cultural role of computers through Computatinalism as a key term.…

With the world economy  recovering from the greatest financial crisis in modern times, researching its effect on the virtual economies that people playfully or laboriously engage with in online worlds would be interesting, relevant and difficult.  The supposed correlation between real world economy and virtual economies in/between online worlds could be a good starting point to investigate the promises virtual…

How would I do research in web 2.0 and Social Network Sites? First I have to make clear for myself what web 2.0 exactly is. According to Tim O’Reilly, one of the founders of web 2.0, web 2.0 existed after the dot.com crash in 2001. In the…

Structures of Participation in Digital Culture is a reader on the topic of private and public involvement with digital culture. Editor Joe Karaganis promises the reader of the book from the start that he will find different ways of going about the subject, in stead of just the known approaches originating from the fields of scholarly law, technology and media. Also, already from the beginning he states there is no answer to the question of causality when looking at cultural and technological change: no chickens, no eggs. That, for me, is a nice start. So let's have a look at what the book further does with these promises.

Is it still possible to check out? Check in/ check uit. De digitalisering van de openbare ruimte. stems from the assumption that new media developments such as OV-chipkaart and Google Street view are the visible parts of a fundamental development: the digitalization of public spaces. There’s an increasing layer of invisible intelligence round the earth,…

Perhaps it’s my dissatisfaction with social media hypes, and especially the ones that are ignited by marketing guru’s, but I can’t resist the feeling of pseudo science when I read about analyses and predictions about social media on blogs. It’s not that I don’t enjoy reading these posts about the subject that I love, but the neglection of making arguments with scientific foundation is what bothers me. Now I understand that on most popular blogs we are not dealing with new media researchers but I would think that if you are writing about these media a little more profundity would not harm you.

What are MMO games?

Massively Multiplayer Online games are a fresh genre to the gaming industry, as all of them require a strong and stable Internet connection. This particular branch of gaming is becoming more and more popular due to the rapid emergence of new technologies. The genre of MMOG’s probably evolved from Internet MUD’s, which were Role-playing story-line follow-up’s…

For nearly ten years now, media analysts and commentators like Tim O’Reilly have sung the praises of Web 2.0 and social media. The new World Wide Web, characterised by its writerly, inclusive and connective nature, was to democratize the Internet and society around it to a degree hitherto unseen. Web 2.0 was to place to end user in the…

To start understanding social networks and their ceaseless popularity it’s important to understand the people who use them most. Although it’s a mistake to generalize about an entire generation there are unquestionably some central themes that apply to Generation Y, the most active participants in social media that give us clues to why sites like Facebook and Myspace are so popular.

After the web crash in the 90’s a new way of thinking about the internet arose. This lead to a brand new composition of the internet, often referred to as web 2.0. The term does not refer to any particular technical development, but a new way of thinking about the user when developing software. Media theorist

Last week Dutch artist Dennis Sibeijn found out that someone had used his work ‘Truth’ (left) in a competition in Taiwan and actually won. The Taiwanese student who stole the image had not even bothered to edit it it, he just used it right away. Ironically enough, the theme of the design contest was the protection of copyright in design.

I do believe the Web 2.0 is shaping our societies, and much more the way users relate to each other.

Social movements are adopting very fast social media technologies in their communication strategy. They use social network sites mostly for campaigns, dissemination of information, news and awareness raising  among the public.

Raymond Williams in his essay The Technology and the…

‘Sharing information about ones Identity on the net is a process of self-portrayal’ (Baier et al. 2003: p. 3).

A couple of years ago the world of social network sites was quite clear. There was facebook for students, linkedIn for professionals and your parents didn’t have any interest in social network sites. Things have changed, especially facebook. facebook is no…

With the dominance of social networking, user generated content, and the ability to comment on just about anything, web 2.0 has changed the way consumers interact with corporations, especially when they are pissed off. Many corporations are performing the role of laggards, as they do not realize the impact of web 2.0 on their business models until it is brought…

In The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft (2006, MIT Press), (the late) Anne Friedberg traces the history of the relationship between the window and the human experience, from the physical to metaphorical. She draws analogies between the figure of the framed window and the metaphysical framing of experience to provide an historical exegesis detailing the developments of (primarily Western) spectatorial experience in relation to how our perceptions of the world are structured.