Mirko Tobias Schäfer / Assistant Professor
University of Utrecht Department for Media and Culture Studies
Mirko Tobias Schäfer / Assistant Professor
University of Utrecht Department for Media and Culture Studies
Featured Blog Entries
While the new materiality of digitized media content has radically challenged the music and film industry, the publishing industry seemed to feel comfortable neglecting the changing reality of the media business. But then major news papers blamed their decreasing revenues on freely accessible web content, and paint a dark picture of a future lacking proper journalism and diverse media, most ominously, the vanishing of printed papers and magazines. Time for a reality check: It appears that there is not only a demand for print but there are also smart publishers producing innovative print products.
From the outside it looks like an oversized camping tent, from the inside it is more like a space station. World in a Shell is a complete high-tech living environment that perfectly fits into a standard freight container.
More Blog Entries
Date April 2010 / Category News
Date April 2010 / Category News
Date January 2010 / Category News
Recommended
Date July 2010
Evgeny Morozov has a very readable comment on Zuckerberg's naïve views on privacy. He critically reviews the fuzzy rhetoric on so-called social media.
Date July 2010
What appears as user generated content on YouTube, Myspace, FB etc. is screened by software and content reviewers. Via Slashdot, I stumbled upon this NYT article that gives a glance on the job of content reviewers for Web 2.0 applications. It provides a to often unconsidered notion of the Web 2.0 user generated content as subject to strict review processes and corporate editing.
Date July 2010
On the occasion of Clay Shirky's new book "Cognitive Surplus" on how to harvest collective production for a better world, Salon.com features a discussion between Shirky, Andrew Keen and James Mustich on the future of the book, mashing up issues of technological design with the usual legends from utopia to dystopia.
Date June 2010
Last year I served as external respondent for a section of the broad EU survey on The Social Impact of ICT. Now the final report is available as pdf-download. The document consists of reports on participation in policy making, education and life-long learning, work, consumption, health and innovation. The various reports do not only represent the current situation of ICT in the European Union in a meta-survey but also formulate advice for future policy making. It is part of the European Commission's Digital Competitiveness Report on the social and economic impact of ICT.
Date June 2010
The first international congress on Web Studies took place in March in Toluca, Mexico. Those who could not attend but are interested in the presented papers can now download the entire proceedings as well as audio recordings and presentation slides.
Date June 2010
Here (at the New Yorker) is another interesting article on Wikileaks based on an interview with Julian Assange.
Date May 2010
It is fascinating to compare the news coverage by the New York Times and the Guardian with the amazing PR spin of British Petroleum. Their website boasts of optimism, communicating a determined and efficient action against the "relatively tiny" (BP CEO Tony Hayward) oil spill.
Date May 2010
Stanford researcher Clifford Nass and colleagues have put the persistent legend of multitasking to a test in their study Cognitive control in media multitaskers (2009). Especially those who are considered to be excellent multitaskers are particularily bad at it. They seem also to unlearn to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant getting, caught up in the multiple distractions they are trying to deal with simultaneously.
About
Mirko Tobias Schaefer is a researcher in the field of digital culture.
This website provides information on his research interests and teaching activities.
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Contact
Mirko Tobias Schaefer
Department for Media and Culture Studies
Utrecht University
Kromme Nieuwegr. 20
NL-3512 HH Utrecht