Social media and Web 2.0 have radically changed the way we communicate with each other. Blogs and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter let us participate with each other in a whole new manner. People with the same interests and ideas from all over the world have the ability to connect with each other without the necessity of physical presence. Apart from that and in comparison to the other mass media, Web 2.0 applications enable us ‘citizens’ to engage in the public debate on a whole different level (Keren, 2010). Can we think of web 2.0, blogs and social networking sites as public spheres and how does this translate to our offline lives?
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 for a particular group of users. Of course when it only concerns interests like geology or animals, one can join…
The rapid expansion of internet uptake throughout the world created a potential for new social experiences, and thus offers researchers new environments for their social enquiry (Beddows, 2008). Kaye and Johnson predicted already in 1999 that the World Wide Web and other new electronic technologies might soon become prime survey vehicles due to convenient, verifiable, low-cost delivery and return systems…
She' ll smile to you if you move to the left. No, try a different angle. I don't know... Is she smiling at all? For over 500 years, viewers and researchers have been trying to interpret Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile. If a half-smile is worth that much attention, that says a lot about the importance of emotions. And maybe even more about the difficulty of their detection.Internet users, having to deal with the lack of face-to-face interaction and the frequency of misinterpretation, started to convey their feelings with emoticons.
Location-based applications are the new hype. Their presence is prominent in festivals, conferences and symposia that address to new media technologies, or to use the most recent terminology, that address to cross media developments. Thinkers and researchers either praise their possibilities and robustness or spread the fear concentrating in the malicious way that they may detect human and objects in…
A great example of how the privacy issues we face on social networks are not just limited to our data being sold to marketers. This BBC interview tells how a British girl was traced by her natural sister on a social networking site before her adopted mother had the chance to tell her she had an extended birth family.
There is an open data movement afoot, now, around the world. (Berners-Lee, 2010)
Tim Berners-Lee is optimistic in his 2010 Ted talk The year open data went worldwide. Berners-Lee is one of the advocates for open data, he is trying to archieve that governments, companies and communities put their data sets online. When all this data is accessible, online…
In the first systematic study about movie stardom and its heavy influence on early mass culture, Edgar Morin (1957) argues that during the golden studio-age Hollywood was able to dramatically change the ritual function of the mythical universe: by replacing traditional gods and heroes with god-like actors and stars, classical american cinema established a new emotional bridge between…
In order to gain some more insight in the inner workings of Wikipedia, I've created a new entry about the book Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women by Ricky Jay. A highly recommended history book about some of the worlds most amazing circus and sideshow entertainers and... Well, just read the entry.
Numerous academic books and articles that have claimed to address the workings of new media tend to merely present an online phenomenon’s lineage or draw an analogy between older (media) theory and newer media (theory). Let us, for instance, consider the central role Foucault’s analysis of power relations and the panopticon has played and still plays in new media’s…
I am in the process of creating an English Wikipedia page for the school I work at, Het Amsterdams Lyceum.
The state I initially found this Wikipedia page in is illustrative of the reasons many teachers believe forms of collaborative knowledge are a threat to accuracy and authority. It included references to famous ex-students (written by those students themselves)…
In the past years the Internet has been flooded with user generated content. The theory on new media has subsequently been flooded with research into this phenomenon, that is commonly centered around the web 2.0 concept. This theorizing of the beautiful possibilities and promises of freedom on the Internet has become almost tiresome. What I want to do here, is…
Last week I saw this TEDx presentation by David Armano. In this inspring 16 minutes he talks about how social media itself, is not social. Armano says that it is the people itself that are social. It is time for us to look beyond the technology of social media and to focus on the social needs that human
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I can call myself HOT officially since last Thursday the 23th. Attending PICNIC 2010 with 99 fellow HOT-students is a hot experience indeed. Packed in a decorated marquee, listening to Sebastian Chan who is currently the Head of Digital, Social and Emerging Technologies at the Powerhouse Museum. His teams include the museum’s web unit, audiovisual and photography, rights…
About the other, less seen, side of Israel: Technology and digital innovation
“People of good conscience have chosen to boycott israeli products and companies supporting the zionist entity.” is stated on the Anti-Israël website inminds.com. Such political statements are not new, in fact Israel has been fighting these attemps (and other attacks too) for decades. Nevertheless,…
A short entry on people botting, people plotting, bots multiboxing, and virtual goods adverts in games. Includes a MOVIE!
Where lies the power in network society? That’s the question Manuel Castells tries to answer in his book ‘Communication Power’. An interesting and relevant question considering our changing society. According to Castells, power relationships operate in networks. In his book he concentrates on the communication networks, because power relations are mainly based on shaping the human mind. So, according to…
While searching for a subject to write about on Wikipedia, every word I came up with already existed. So I thought about the example that was given, and decided to write about the history of the Amsterdam Dance Centre. I took my time on writing something interesting about it. After posting it, I got a message straight away. My article…
I’m writing this post to say that, since I posted my wikipedia article about Lost character John Locke, I haven’t heard a single thing from bots or other people. I tried to find something that was in my field of interest, combined with the wish that it allready should have had some kind of obstacle. When I found…
The English version of Wikipedia has over 3,400,000 articles at this time, so when I was contemplating a subject that I wanted to contribute on the web-encyclopedia, you could imaging it was hard to come up with something that wasn’t already on there. For a moment I thought about writing something for the Dutch version of Wikipedia, but since I rarely use this version myself I had the feeling that I wouldn’t be contributing much to the body of knowledge if I published an entry on it. Eventually I decided to start a page about one of my favorite websites; SpaceCollective.