Twitter Archives - Public Seminar

The Internet

Why I Joined Twitter Blue

And why so many people are quietly doing it too

February 2, 2023 • by Claire Potter

Twitter Blue is essentially a different Twitter—and the other, nonsubscription one is not neglected or "broken"—it got broke....

Past Present

Elon Musk, Twitter, and the History of Media Oligarchs

Past Present Podcast, Episode 324

May 3, 2022 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Billionaire Elon Musk made a successful $44 billion bid to acquire Twitter. Niki referred to this Los Angeles Times article about the limits of Elon Musk’s “free speech absolutism.” Natalia referenced this New York Times article about billionaire investors in ...

Elon Musk, Twitter, and the History of Media Oligarchs

Politics

The Man Who Predicted Twitter Mobs

Gustave Le Bon and the mind of the crowd

July 10, 2020 • by Mitchell Abidor

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 ...

History

Plague in the Age of Twitter

March 17, 2020 • by Eileen Sperry

COVID-19 has quickly become the outbreak of the digital era. SARS and H1N1 played out on the evening news, but this -- this is happening in real time, in piecemeal, in limited character counts. While epidemics have come and gone before, it feels unprecedented, at least in my lifetime as a 30-something, to ...

North America

Revisiting the Netroots, 2020 Edition

Recent reports that Russia has been interfering with the election are no surprise — but this is what to do about it

February 22, 2020 • by Claire Potter

But at Public Seminar, we have been paying attention to the corruption of what blogger Jerome Armstrong dubbed “the netroots” in 2002: grassroots political activism that occurs primarily online. In collaboration with our friends in the Eurozine network, we have a cluster of articles in this week’s issue about Disinformation. Adam Ramsay shows how disinformation, on its ...

History

Public Thinker: an Interview with Kevin Kruse

Why recent history is still history

November 18, 2019 • by Lily Geismer

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 ...