Instagram is a social, mobile photography app. They have 100 million monthly active users, and 40 million Instagram photos are posted per day. Purchased by the leviathan of social media that is Facebook in 2012, Instagram seems to be some kind of "big deal". From a commercial perspective, Instagram is an immensely easy-t0-use and popular … Continue reading #Instalife: How Instagram redefines the meaning and practice of photography
Category: psychology
Please see also Part 1 and Part 2. PART 3: NGOs AND DIGITAL RIGHTS In the last section I considered the roles of business and governments in protecting "net neutrality", or the basic neutrality of Internet conduits. Net neutrality is a subtle concept, involving the protection of a particular idea about what Internet access is … Continue reading The Politics and Power of Internet Infrastructure, Pt. 3
We traditionally understand the world to be controlled primarily by technologies of violence and destruction. Who controls these technologies and how they are regulated are arguably the most important factors determining the global political landscape. Nuclear proliferation almost entirely determined international relations during the Cold War era, and North Korea's recent suggestion about possible nuclear … Continue reading The Politics and Power of Internet Infrastructure
The past few posts I have written all belong to a collection of case studies about new media practices and the 2012 elections. I want to collect them all here, and briefly reflect on what these case studies might mean overall for democratic engagement and participation. #MocktheVote Practices of political news consumption and production on … Continue reading New Media Practices and the 2012 Presidential Elections
In the lengthy and involved media spectacle surrounding the 2012 elections, the day of reckoning is of course voting day. Traditionally, media messaging switches from heated horse-race coverage to “neutral” coverage encouraging people to get out and vote, with live coverage of lines at polls and providing information on polling locations. This year witnessed an … Continue reading #Ivoted: Documenting the Vote in the 2012 Elections
Twitter and the 2012 Elections: Media Practice and Politics Whereas Facebook is a platform that treats politics as more or less taboo, Twitter's network is made up substantially of news outlets/media organizations, political junkies and citizen journalists. This characteristic of Twitter's population of users is partly a product of the site's informational architecture, which makes … Continue reading Live-tweeting democracy: the fantasy of representation
Since its beginning, the Internet's potential to disseminate information broadly and easily has been hailed as a great democratizing force. Today, this idealist vision has somewhat deteriorated, with some arguing that the Internet creates “echo-chambers” and "filter bubbles" of like-minded people who can choose to only engage with material that agrees with them, and preventing people from being active … Continue reading Practices of political news production and consumption on Facebook’s news feed
Media practice and the 2012 elections: Theorizing new models of democratic participation This case study is named after a hashtag that was trending on Twitter during the three presidential debates. Appropriated from the popular “Rock the vote” campaign, this label was being used to tag Tweets commenting on the debate as it went down- although not … Continue reading #Mockthevote: A Case Study in Democratic Media Practice
The following is the first part of a lengthy consideration of the idea of the Hashtag Revolution as a model for a social/political movement. This section considers mainly the Occupy movement, and the next section considers the relevance of the concept of the hashtag revolution to the presidential elections. The hashtag revolution or hashtag revolt is … Continue reading Hashtag Revolution
The "Big Bird" phenomenon, spurred by Mitt Romney's comment during the first presidential debate that he would cut spending for PBS to reduce the deficit, has evolved into one of the hottest political memes of the 2012 election. During the debate Romney's Big Bird comment received 135,332 Tweets Per Minute, and continues to have a … Continue reading BIG BIRD: Reclaiming the Political Spectacle
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