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Saturday, December 1, 2018
by Christopher Breen You follow the #OnPoli hashtag religiously, and you certainly know your way around the Google search engine. All things considered, you might think you are a reasonably well-informed voter. But when you go to the polls in the upcoming Ontario election, will you really know all there is to know? It’s... More
by Jansen Allen You wake up in the morning, while still lying in bed you leisurely scroll through your Facebook feed and check Twitter for the latest radical tweets from today’s celebrity politicians. Your morning ritual continues, as you sip your daily double-double and pull your car out of the parking space, your favourite... More
by Matt Hammar Since the bulk of our society began adopting the Internet in the 1990s, it has been anticipated as being the most influential innovation to the democratization of authority since the printing press. Through such an evolution it was predicted to bring with it a profound shift from that of vertical to... More
by Rachel Farah The term “digital democracy” has a nice ring to it. It sums up everything that we want the internet to be, and perhaps, what it once was before the emergence of Web 2.0. It denotes a utopian ideal of the possibilities that the internet affords such as open dialogue, free speech,... More
Thursday, November 1, 2018
It’s time to stop the culture of online harassment and “networked misogyny” (because let’s face it, these online attacks are disproportionately gendered). While increasing the number of women in leadership roles is a necessary condition for effecting cultural change, it is by no means sufficient. Assuming we want to foster diversity... More
Scientists are working to resurrect woolly mammoths! You might remember headlines from a while ago proclaiming this Jurassic Park-esque possibility. It had something to do with retrieving frozen DNA. Or maybe something about using that gene-editing technique that everyone keeps talking about? CRISPY, or CRISPER, or whatever it’s called?... More
Monday, October 1, 2018
Introduction by Rory Clark The social media boom that began in 2007 is perhaps now coming to an end, with Facebook numbers now dropping for millennials and post-millennials in Canada, not to mention the many post US election social media ‘scandals’ (I’ll just let you Google that one yourself and take your pick), as... More
by Leiqin Shen Since their mass adoption by the public, digital media and the Web 2.0 have been essential tools for activists, protests and uprisings. More and more people every day are joining discussions facilitated by social media concerning social issues and social movements. Supporting this notion are the events surrounding rapid... More
by Eldora Aoun I know what you’re thinking when you read the title of this article. You’re thinking, “online activism is slacktivism at its finest . . . People participate online just to pat themselves on the back and feel good about doing their part for humanity . . . However, at the end... More
Although “speculative fiction” is sometimes used as a catch-all term that includes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and superhero literature, Margaret Atwood identifies speculative and science fiction as different genres. While science fiction, according to Atwood, “has monsters and spaceships”, speculative fiction is about things... More
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
Introduction by Rory Clark Social media, the major social networks and platforms as we know them today, were originally conceived with much more humble and basic functionality in mind. The word “social”, in social media, originally referred to socialization, not society. Originally, they were simply intended to digitize connection,... More
by Freyja Wilson Advancements in technology have led to remarkable innovations in the ways we interact with information, commerce, and the people around us and around the world. However, a significant problem is that the online interactions we have concerning activism are often insincere and self-serving. Clicktivism/slacktivism and social... More
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