An Assassination in Poland

Charity and madness in times of hate

Paweł Adamowicz, the mayor of Gdańsk, was fatally stabbed on Sunday while standing on the stage in the center of the city during the finale of the Grand Orchestra of Christmas Charity winter drive, Poland’s largest and until now most joyous charity event. Although immediately hospitalized, he died Monday. Everyone instantly ...
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An Assassination in Poland

We Make the Media

Why freedom of speech is a matter of choice

This essay is adapted from the opening keynote for the Future of Speech Online, held at the beautiful Knight Conference Center atop the Newseum in Washington, DC. on December 7, 2018. It’s become necessary at gatherings about the future of media to start by banning the “f” word, a word that gets a lot ...
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We Make the Media

The Possibilities for New Ways of Living

What students help their professors learn about teaching the Anthropocene

1. The Anthropocene designates Earth’s departure from the stable climates of the Holocene and its entrance into a more volatile and unknown operating space as glaciers melt, seas rise, and climates change. As I see it we are living in not only the Anthropocene but more specifically, as I’ve written from ...
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The Possibilities for New Ways of Living

Why Should Data Determine Who We Are?

Steffen Mau’s “Quantified Self” explains how we can reclaim agency over our digital lives

The Chinese government intends to create a social credit system by the year 2020. Data about the behaviour of each individual from all spheres of life shall be collected, evaluated, and transformed into a personal score. Consumption, traffic offences, activities on the internet, employment contracts, performance ratings both at school ...
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Why Should Data Determine Who We Are?

Hungary’s Attack on Gender Studies

A threatening online message and institutional inaction exposes the official illiberalism

Abby L. Ferber, in her 2017 presidential address at the meeting of Sociologists for Women in Society, analyzed the threats and harassment educators face in institutions of higher education in the United States -- quoted Malcom X: “If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out ...
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Hungary’s Attack on Gender Studies

Upstaging the Trump Reality Show

How Montana’s socialist ‘Plaid Shirt Guy’ hacked a Trump rally

It isn’t easy to upstage Donald Trump, but Tyler Linfesty -- a 17-year old high school student from Billings, Montana -- managed to divert attention away from the president at a recent Trump rally in his hometown. Linfesty became an immediate internet sensation on September 6 as he stood on the ...
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Upstaging the Trump Reality Show

Irony and Historical Detachment

Analysis/discussion of pastiche in social media

This second interpretation is what I want to focus on. I want to show that instead of being a form of humor the graffiti in this image is representative of a strain of urbane, ironic detachment that has become pervasive in Anglophone cultures over the past decades. I want to ...
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Irony and Historical Detachment

The Election of Donald Trump and the Great Disruption in the News and Social Media

Pablo J. Boczkowski and Zizi Papacharissi’s introduction to Trump and the Media

Donald Trump's election as the 45th President of the United States came as something of a surprise -- to many analysts, journalists, and voters. The New York Times’s The Upshot gave Hillary Clinton an 85 percent chance of winning the White House even as the returns began to come in. What ...
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The Election of Donald Trump and the Great Disruption in the News and Social Media

Privacy and Surveillance

Who are we in the age of social media and reality television?

We currently live in an age of constant surveillance. As users of the Internet, whether or not we consent our information is being shared to companies and businesses for their own benefit. Social media thus has become a form of surveillance in which we share details about our lives and ...
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Privacy and Surveillance

Apple vs. Facebook

Two Tech Giants at War

Facebook’s unsettled crisis with Cambridge Analytica may become further inflamed as issues of user privacy and debates between two technological giants intensify. Following the recent Facebook scandal regarding the Twitter movement known as #DeleteFacebook, Mark Zuckerberg has received staggering backlash from the public as well as the CEO of Apple Inc., ...
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Apple vs. Facebook

Dark Times, Cultural Freedom and (the) Media

Reflections on The Inauguration of The Center for Media at Risk

I am now at the inauguration of the Center for Media at Risk at Annenberg School of Communication in Philadelphia. The opening ceremonies have been completed. The presentations and discussions begin later this morning. I see from the program a broad set of concerns, with special sessions on the Digital, ...
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Dark Times, Cultural Freedom and (the) Media

The Formal Ethics of Metony#metoo

Poetics, Power, Primal Scene

Last year the journal Studies in Gender and Sexuality published a panel called "The ontology of the rape joke," organized around a performance by Vanessa Place of her piece, "Rape joke." The panel included responses from Jamieson Webster, Jeff Dolven, Gayle Salamon, Kyoo Lee, Katie Gentile, and Virginia Goldner, and ended with ...
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The Formal Ethics of Metony#metoo