Crossmedialab Blog

The Big Bang Theory

Rogier Brussee — Thu, 17 May 2012 02:53:35 +0200

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), remnant of the big bang.

American’s are top taggers

Erik Hekman — Mon, 14 May 2012 22:14:23 +0200

I’m currently in the process of wrapping up my paper about Flickr the Commons. Retrieving a large dataset really has been beneficial in regards to my research. I’m not going to blog any spoilers but it is fun to look at the data especially in regard to the location of the Flickr Community members. To get a better understanding who contributes to the Commons we analyzed 167,871 accounts. This was the total amount of accounts who actively did something with the content of the institutions. One of the more interesting things was to see if we could determine the users locations and see which countries participate more.

I control my data therefor I am

Kees Winkel — Fri, 11 May 2012 16:45:04 +0200

Uncertainty. Uncertainty about the existing symbolic order, norms and values and which way out to choose. In ‘Life as a construction box’, Swierstra^[1] et al. begin their publication with the conception of ‘way out’ which, in my ayes is a bit heavy (my connotation of ‘way out’ has to do with escape). But then, the publication is a bout the most relevant, current and rather important issues of our days. Issues like privacy, man and machine, ambient and pervasive technology, health and being unhealthy and, as would like to put it, the makebility of reality, an as fundamental as rather intangible confusion trying to surface through solid ethical questions and controversies. Dutch philosopher Peter Paul Verbeek^{[see Swiestra]} questions whether people have the possibility to withdraw themselves from ambient and pervasive technology. And what about our log-time disputed basic right of privacy?

Archetypes in magazines

Frank Meeuwsen — Mon, 07 May 2012 10:29:22 +0200

Even though we are researching in the digital space, and my main passion lies at the internet and digital media, I will always have a soft spot for magazines, Especially independent magazines. Next to my iPad, I always have a big pile of magazines waiting to be read. I read magazines offline as well as on my iPad. I must say, reading magazines on a digital device leaves something to be desired. For instance, you don't have the tactile feeling of knowing how far you are in a magazine. It doesn't have a nice way to flip the pages fast, just to get a feel of the magazine. That's why I will keep reading magazines in print. This led me to the Facing Pages festival in Arnhem this weekend. An intimate festival to celebrate independent magazines worldwide. Where else would you find magazines on Meatculture right next to a stencilled personal 'zine dedicated to DWDD's presenter Matthijs van Nieuwkerk? The festival revolves around three rooms: The lecture room, the exhibition and the lobby with magazine store. To start with the last. Amsterdam based Atheneum Bookstore runs the popup store with a great selection of magazines. I have found some great titles with outrageous designs. Some of the magazines have their digital counterpart, but to tell you the truth, they don't hold up to the real thing in your hands.

Would Plato’s Cyborg be male?

Kees Winkel — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:59:51 +0200

I do this philosophy course at the university of Utrecht. Fascinating (and not in Spock’s connotation). The professors make us compare texts and write no more than approximately three hundred words about it. That is a challenge. Have a look of what I cooked up from the texts of
1. Benjamin Jowett’s translation of Plato’s Phaedrus (1)
2. Jos de Mul’s chapter 1, part four of Filosofie in Cyberspace (2) (in Dutch) and
3. Donna Harraway’s Cyborg Manifesto (3) .
Is there any coomunality in the texts and if so, what is it. If not what is the common difference? Etc. So, after a couple of work-through-the-nights, I came up with my common denominator: would Plato’s Cyborg be male? Make up your own mind!

Tough Nut to Crack

Thijs Waardenburg — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:14:17 +0200

Monitoring activities on the web is not new or unique. You have probably heard of Google Analytics (GA), a service that allows to monitor the traffic on a website. Nice graphics and tables show how many people have visited a particular page, where they come from, how long they stay on a page, and so on. This gives a certain impression of the success of a website.

The Great Media Strategy Game

Rogier Brussee — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:34:18 +0200

Event12: been there, done that...

Harry van Vliet — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 10:47:21 +0200

Since we are finalizing our current research on festivals and working towards a publication in September, we are coming out of our research closet! Last week a ‘snippet’ of our research was presented at the international ASCA meeting in Amsterdam by Jelke de Boer en Michiel Rovers. This concerned the somewhat surprising result of social media users having lower scores on motivation question, before as well as during the festival. Could it be that social media users are less intrinsically motivated and more ‘instrumental’, scanning what leisure opportunities are available and choosing which one fits most conveniently? And are social media users during a festival more pre-occupied with showing they are ‘there’ at the festival (‘look at me!’) instead of being in the moment of experiencing the festival? Putting a mobile phone between you and the performing artist is a physical act of distancing yourself from what is happening around you by literally putting media between you and your surroundings. Adformatie also picked up these surprising results, and although being wrongly quoted on it, was further evidence for us that people are interested in our research.

Frictionless Sharing: a critical view on automated sharing of media texts in social media

Kees Winkel — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 21:29:29 +0200

On Februari 16 of this year, Volkskrant published an article called The future of social media is automated sharing; handy but sometimes a bit embarrassing in which the author Heleen van Lier notes that the future of sharing media texts lies in automated sharing. Central theme in her article stands Frictionless Sharing; a phrase introduced by social medium Facebook a couple of months ago. Representatives of Facebook, Reuters, Nokia and Microsoft debated Frictionless Sharing (FS) during the Social Media Week in London. The debate panel came to the conclusion that FS is here to stay. Use of the technology is simple; after agreeing once, the user starts sharing his data with other in linked media.

Paper accepted!

Erik Hekman — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:57:32 +0200

This abstract I wrote, together with Harry van Vliet, about the usage of Flickr the Commons was accepted for the Heritage Impact 2012 in Brighton. I'm quite excited because this will be the first in a serie of papers focussing on social media data harvesting and analyses. Read the abstract here:

How to cope with social media use of employees that concern your organization: “threat or addition”?

Charlotte van Nus — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:18:24 +0100

More and more organizations are implementing social media in their communication strategy to communicate to their external and internal stakeholders. Vice versa social media are also being used by employees to share daily activities, concerns or other organization-related content with their online social network. Employees are increasingly present during working hours and in spare time on social media. Almost one third of the employees are regularly posting organization-related messages, according to a study of Verhoeven (2012). So the question how to deal with content posted by employees on social networks that concern the organization is increasingly important.
Recently the national railways of the Netherlands (NS) has send official warnings to employees who posted messages on Twitter about defective coffee machines and used (#) hash tags of the organization and (#) fail during the winter period. This in turn could cause, from the perspective of the NS, damage to the organization.

“Page or Stage”

Dick Swart — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:49:25 +0100

Over the past three millennia the paper on which we write and read evolved into something with more or less standard proportions and orientation. We grew accustomed to reading on paper that is about 1,5 times higher than its width. This may have to do with the fact that text on paper evolved from the papyrus scroll with one column in a vertical orientation into a scroll with a horizontal orientation where the text is placed in a series of columns next to each other. Later on this horizontal scroll was folded ‘concertina’ into a book like thing. Eventually the codex-format emerged from this folded scroll. Ever since the invention of the codex in roman times, books have always been higher then its width except for rare, silly artistic endeavors. Reading text is done best on vertical oriented pages also known as ‘portrait’. I call this the page paradigm.

Bobbi Bear

Guido Froijen — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:06:04 +0100

This week in the Lab we’ve had a presentation from Dennis Ringersma, former student and colleague from the Crossmedialab. The past years he dedicated himself to volunteer with the Bobbi Bear Organization in Africa. This organization helps sexual abused children.

The Journal Club and Roland Barthes, An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative

Rogier Brussee — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 01:03:16 +0100

Figure 1 Roland Barthes teaching

How's hyve?

Michiel Rovers — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 20:24:08 +0100

Last year many friends turned over from the Dutch social network website Hyves to Facebook. A major reason was the acquisition of Hyves by publisher TMG (Telegraaf Media Group). With my friends a large number of Hyvers also removed their profile. In January last year I also switched from Hyves to Facebook. Since that day I've lost sight of what is happening on this social network. Until yesterday. Yesterday Marc de Vries, CEO of Hyves visited our school for a guest-lecture. One of his comments was a warning: the fact that your friends removed their profile doesn’t mean that Hyves isn’t doing well. On the contrary, Hyves is alive and kicking. In this blog a short summary of the developments.

Refreshing

Matthijs Rotte — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:21:57 +0100

When I was younger, I used too feel I had to go out. I had to meet my friends in bars, parks and squares to have a drink and socialize. I felt this way because I had the feeling that when I was not there, I was missing out. This feeling of not wanting to miss out was so powerful that for some time I argued with my parents in the middle of the night, because they were not agreeing with me going out yet again. This is called puberty.

Digital fridges, analogue laundry

Jelke de Boer — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:36:24 +0100

As my colleague Kees Winkel already pointed out we’ve recently started a fascinating course on new media theory at the University of Utrecht. While many interesting concepts, ideas and discussions have past in the first few weeks there is one specific topic that triggered me: technological determinism versus social constructionism. While it is a really academic discussion that stretches far beyond the domain of just these new media studies it somehow got me to think of my grandma’s washing machine?

De-Gamification

Harry van Vliet — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:01:19 +0100

Although gamification is so 2011, I bet we will be seeing it cropping up here and there in 2012 and beyond. Why? Because it is such a simple and yet powerful concept: we all know our 'games' and we all can come up with examples how certain incentives helped us achieve our goals, whether it was money, game points or esteem. So why not incorporate 'gamification' into more (social) activities such as health, education, environmental issues and make the world a better place? There’s nothing to loose, is there? Yes there is, gamification can crowd out intrinsic pleasure or moral motives. In other words, there is potential harm in gamification…

Bringing the past to the Present

Erik Hekman — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:20:55 +0100

The growing impact of information technology and digitisation, ever since the beginning of the 1990s, has given cultural heritage institutions a fresh impulse to deal with the problem of accessibility of their collections (Van Vliet, 2009). Their efforts, however, are still mostly aimed at cultural preservation, and, for the time being, have done little to bring us closer to the dream of a Virtual Collection in the Netherlands. For instance, more than 30 million art objects were still not digitised in 2008 in the Netherlands (Veeger, 2008). Meanwhile, it has become urgent to further open the door. The Internet’s dominant role in recent years has caused a change in the relationship between media producers, suppliers and consumers in the traditional media landscape. The cultural sector must therefore decide what to do with today’s digital media in response to the general public’s changing role, and for the purpose of improving accessibility. The use of multiple media resources and particularly resources like the Internet and mobile telephony seems to be inevitable. The only question that remains is: how? This paper addresses this question by focussing on social tagging and storytelling, and reports the results of an empirical study on tagging behaviour using the social tagging platform www.ikweetwatditis.nl (see also Van Vliet et al., 2010).

Fascinating

Kees Winkel — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:27:22 +0100

Fascinating. I have started following a course at the University of Utrecht. This Monday morning, I found myself in a hugh auditorium with my colleague Jelke de Boer and some 430 other students. Apart from Jelke and me, I recon the average age was somewhere round 20. “Fascinating”, I found myself thinking in a rather Mr. Spock-like fashion as I really tried to make absolute sense of what I was doing there and how it happened of me actually sitting in that big dark hall with assistant professor Mirko Tobias Schäfer explaining the differences between McLuhan and Williams, ergo, the perhaps philosophical or at least academic dispute on issues of Technological Determinism and Social Constructivism. Fascinating.