Departments

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social media

  • SOURCE: Harper's
    8/17/2021

    Selling the Story of Disinformation

    Today's concern with "disinformation" has roots in the postwar advertising industry, but do programs to fight it repeat faulty ideas about information and persuasion that admen created to persuade companies their ads would work? 

  • SOURCE: Wired
    5/2/2021

    Josh Hawley’s Virtual Reality

    Writer Gilad Edelman says that Josh Hawley's book twists the history of antitrust policy to fit the needs of today's Republican culture war against the social media giants. 

  • SOURCE: Perspectives on History
    3/10/2021

    Tweeting To Find Community

    by Varsha Venkatasubramanian

    Don't fear Twitter, new historians. Use it for learning, networking, and fun.

  • SOURCE: Governing
    12/21/2020

    Has Twitter Changed How History Will See This Era?

    Carole McGranahan, a professor of history and anthropology, says that social media need to be taken seriously as sources of insight into the actions of prominent and anonymous people alike, and need to be preserved as sources.

  • SOURCE: N+1
    12/12/2020

    We Live in a Society

    by Gabriel Winant

    Despite lamentations that social media have replaced face-to-face social life, those media platforms are increasingly important as sites of human contact and interaction. Anyone seeking political change must recognize this power and organize social networks to supplant it. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    12/15/2020

    Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine

    Facebook isn't exactly like they hypothetical "Doomsday Machine" theorized by Cold War nuclear deterrence experts. But its vast scope and capacity to distribute misinformation faster than in can be detected and corrected mean that lessons from the philosophy of nuclear annihilation are apt for understandign the danger of the social media giants. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
    9/23/2020

    Trump’s TikTok Deal Shows how Trade with China is Woven into the American DNA

    by Sean Fraga

    "Americans’ beliefs about the value of transpacific trade informed every aspect of the transcontinental railroads. This history shows how deeply trade with China is woven into the American fabric and suggests President Trump’s hostility toward China is unlikely to outlast his administration."

  • 7/19/2020

    A Historian's Reflections on American Dissent

    by Ralph Young

    At a time like this one longs for a Gandhi or a King to come along and show us the way. Or a Lincoln or a Roosevelt who took up the challenge of leading the United States through existential crises. But I don't see that happening. Not in 2020. Not on the federal level.