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Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Depending on how familiar you are with reddit, you might think of it as a place where people post memes and cat pictures. Or maybe your perception of the site is shaped by some of its stranger communities – for every subforum (or ‘subreddit’ as they’re called on the site) that’s dedicated to sharing... More
A secret program in the UK has been using the school system’s data collection to uncover illegal migrants by identifying those children attending public school. In a recent interview with the Guardian, Martha Spurrier, the director of Liberty in the UK, accused the program of turning the Department of Education “into a border... More
Sunday, October 15, 2017
Seven years ago author Malcolm Gladwell – in a piece penned for The New Yorker – declared that the “revolution will not be tweeted”. In making a case against what he characterizes as the “so-called Twitter revolution”, Gladwell muses on how social media platforms simultaneously make it easier for activists to express themselves and... More
Saturday, September 30, 2017
Thirty three years ago today, September 30th 1965, marked the beginning of the anticommunist massacre in Indonesia — a bloodbath considered to be one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. In a singular official version of the event propagated by the Indonesian government, the day marked the "day of betrayal" by the... More
Sunday, September 17, 2017
For many us, when you see that a friend has checked-in somewhere posted on Facebook, your eyes probably glaze over and you quickly skip past their Foursquare recommendation of a specific restaurant or coffee shop. But last fall, you may have noticed that a large number of your Facebook friends apparently went to... More
The Conversation just published a short essay entitled "Beyond fake news: social media and market-driven political campaigns" written by Merlyna Lim. This essay is a summary of a much longer and comprehensive article, titled "Freedom to Hate: social media, algorithmic enclaves, and the rise of tribal nationalism in Indonesia," published... More
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Part 1 of this blog post discussed some of the issues concerning how social movements are named. Catchy titles such as Arab Spring, the Umbrella Revolution, and the Fishball Revolution are part of journalistic practices that grab readers’ attention. However, these names also frame a movement through the development of its name. These... More
Monday, September 11, 2017
Should people receiving social assistance be forced to accept work, with their benefits being cut if they turn down a job? And should the government be allowed to force these people to move to a different city in order to accomplish this? Thanks to Bill-70, which was passed into law last November (2016),... More
Sunday, September 10, 2017
I remember when sitting in a fourth year seminar class here at Carleton, listening to students engaged in a discussion on contemporary issues that arose from the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa/Maghreb (MENA). One thought I couldn’t keep out of my mind was: why is it called the “Arab... More
Thursday, September 7, 2017
There’s plenty of debate about the value of comments sections with online publishers. The Toronto Star is the most recent major Canadian newspaper to disable the comments section of their online news stories beginning December 16th after the CBC, the Sun, and many US media organizations have done the same thing since as early as 2012. ... More
We’ve probably all heard about “filter bubbles” by now – the idea that, despite having ready access to an effectively unlimited cache of information on any number of topics, people often end up in social media echo chambers. This doesn’t just happen through intentional selection (i.e., choosing to follow things online that reflect your... More
When I began my masters’ research, I wanted to learn more about how popular feminist blogs, such as Jezebel, are influencing the ways readers think about and understand contemporary feminist politics, written through popular culture news and gossip. Although my thesis project looked at more feminist blogs, for this blog post, I want to... More
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