Digital Authoritarianism and Trolling in Turkey

In 2007, Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) had its second election victory, increasing its vote share to 47,8 and consolidating power. In the same year, it imposed important regulations to ‘clean’ the Internet of undesirable content. Law 5651, On Regulation of Publications on the Internet and Combating Crimes committed ...
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Digital Authoritarianism and Trolling in Turkey

Is the TikTok Deal Another Level of Trumpian Corruption?

Threatening China’s ByteDance may have forced a deal that benefits a campaign donor

----- Here’s one more chore that Joe Biden should add to his Day One presidential to-do list: launch an investigation into whether the Trump administration improperly steered the U.S. operations of the world’s hottest new social media platform, TikTok, into the hands of one of his most important supporters, Oracle co-founder ...
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Is the TikTok Deal Another Level of Trumpian Corruption?

The Man Who Predicted Twitter Mobs

Gustave Le Bon and the mind of the crowd

In May, the New York Times published an opinion piece I wrote on the position taken by Democratic Socialists of America and Jacobin magazine on the presidential election. Both DSA and the magazine had expressed opposition to support for Joseph Biden, and the editor of Jacobin announced his intention to ...
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The Man Who Predicted Twitter Mobs

Democracy is Losing the Online Arms Race

How media monopolies have damaged the public sphere – and what we can do about it.

I started writing about the potential for computer-mediated communication in 1987, decades before online communication became widely known as “social media.” My inquiries about where the largely benign online culture of the 1980s might go terribly wrong led me to the concept of the “public sphere,” which had received a ...
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Democracy is Losing the Online Arms Race

#MeToo and the Ontological Trauma of Consciousness Raising, Part 2

Cancel Culture: Failed Activism or Post-Traumatic Response?

#Canceled: Low-brow comedy that hinges on race-based impressions, racial slurs, and gross stereotypes. #Canceled: Anyone who has failed to meet today’s standards of wokeness or who fails to demonstrate sufficient contrition. #Canceled: Cultural appropriation (including your kid’s Halloween costume). #Canceled: Your neighbor -- for their bad parking job (such white male entitlement). Your kid’s ...
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#MeToo and the Ontological Trauma of Consciousness Raising, Part 2

#MeToo and the Ontological Trauma of Consciousness Raising, Part 1

Reflections and Conversations Across the Gender Divide

It was two years ago that actor Alyssa Milano, in response to the sexual abuse allegations against media mogul Harvey Weinstein, brought activist Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement into the social media mainstream. And it was one year ago that Christine Blasey Ford, in the midst of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court Justice hearing, ...
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#MeToo and the Ontological Trauma of Consciousness Raising, Part 1

Public Thinker: an Interview with Kevin Kruse

Why recent history is still history

Thinking in public demands knowledge, eloquence, and courage. In this interview series, we hear from public scholars about how they found their path and how they communicate to a wide audience. “Historian. Author/editor of White Flight; The New Suburban History; Spaces of the Modern City; Fog of War; One Nation Under ...
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In Praise of Clicktivism

On the Ethics and Efficacy of Digital Activism

In April 2019 thirty-thousand workers from Stop & Shop, a New England-based grocery chain, went on strike to protest cuts to their wages and benefits. After eleven days of direct action, representatives from the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union reached a settlement with the billion-dollar chain on April ...
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In Praise of Clicktivism

John Singleton, Anti-Semitism in the New York Times, and TikTok

Past Present Episode 178

In this episode, Natalia, Niki, and Neil discuss the legacy of filmmaker John Singleton, an anti-Semitic cartoon in the New York Times, and the latest social media sensation, TikTok. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Filmmaker John Singleton has died. Natalia discussed this article by Singleton in the Hollywood Reporter about whether a ...
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John Singleton, Anti-Semitism in the New York Times, and TikTok

On Media Mess and Its Alternatives

Islands of Totalitarianism and Democracy continued

When people meet in their differences, as equals, develop a capacity to meet and talk in the presence of each other, and develop a capacity to act together in concert, they constitute political power, an island of democracy. For Hannah Arendt, in fact, this is political power in contrast to ...
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On Media Mess and Its Alternatives

How I Knew the #CovingtonBoys Video Was Clickbait

And why you should care that it is

I watched it through, aware of the retweet widget turning over rapidly. It was going viral. Because I did not really understand what the video meant to the thousands sharing it, I clicked on the response widget on the far left to look at comments. I learned Sandmann and Phillips’ names; ...
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How I Knew the #CovingtonBoys Video Was Clickbait