The effect of digital technology on political contention is neither good nor bad, it is both. Yes, the Internet can help activists mobilize and re-frame public issues. It can also distract citizens and feed apathy. It can also help repressive governments watch and censor their citizens. The sooner we accept digital technology’s complex and contradictory…
Read MoreThis past weekend I was a panelist at the sixth annual Rising Tide blogger conference here in my home town of New Orleans. Video of the panel, on social media and social justice, is below. I went to the conference as a spectator and ended up as a panelist because one of the scheduled panelists…
Read More
Note: The authors’ views expressed in this article do not reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government In my last post I discussed how the U.S. Government (USG) is funding civil society organizations (CSOs) abroad to help build their capacity to use new media in the…
Read MoreLast summer Norway suffered a terror attack that struck at the heart of multiculturalism. Today I gave a keynote address at the annual conference of the Contact Committee for Immigrants and the Authorities (KIM) and decided to use that opportunity to discuss ways in which social media can be used to fight back against extremism…
Read MoreWhether you agree with the rioters in London or not (I don’t, and I think it’s acolossal waste of time, a disruption of society, and unnecessarily destructive, but that’s just me… I also hated when my own beloved Red Sox fans ripped apart the Fenway area after the Sox won the ALCS in 2004), digital…
Read MoreAlways nice to see when democracies learn a digital trick from autocracies. Exhibit A: Zavilia.com, a site of unknown ownership which aims to crowdsource the identification of British rioters and pass along the info to police. Exhibit B: Gerdab.ir, a site set up in 2009 by The Information Center of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard…
Read MoreThis morning I was reading Digitize This Book!for my side project on digital epistemology when I came across this 2001 quote from a book byPeter Lunenfeld,a professor in theDesign|Media Artsdepartment atUCLA. A critical theory of technological media will always be in inherent conflict with the practice of creating these very media. For if theory demands…
Read MoreNote: This post by David Karpf, Assistant Professor in the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information, was originally published on shouting loudly. – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Sigh… Micah White just came out with another “assault on clicktivism” article. This…
Read More