Category: Society and Culture

  • Redefining media dynamics in the age of social media*

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    https://twitter.com/WilliamsJon/status/1223502667823140864 In the days leading up to Brexit Day, Boris Johnson broke “with long-standing tradition” and chose to keep broadcasters from recording his message. Instead, as Jon Williams from Ireland’s national broadcasting service observed above, the PM used social media as his primary channel for sending the message out. Now, Johnson hasn’t had the friendliest relationship with…

  • The novel coronavirus and misinformation fears in PH social media

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    This term, one of our modules focuses on relationship management in the social media age. Part of the class requirements has been to post interesting cases or examples we come across on social media, and this has sparked some great discussions in the class forums. One of the more recent posts was about Starbucks’ effective…

  • Collected quotes, 2 of n

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    Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or…

    A black fountain pen on a journal page
  • Logged writing

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    Lately, there’s been some buzz about reviving the practice of blogging. Warren Ellis has posted about it, as has Chuck Wendig, and a bunch of other people, I’m sure. There seems to be a growing collective awareness of how ephemeral social media can be, and how devastating that can be when these social media platforms…

  • Collected quotes, 1 of n

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    All these clocks, like the whole information industry today, run the risk of no longer communicating anything because they tell too much. But they also possess another characteristic of the information industry: they no longer speak of anything except themselves and their internal functioning. Eco, Umberto. “How Not to Know the Time.” How to Travel…

    A black fountain pen on a journal page
  • Podcast notes: Broader implications

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    Listened to an illuminating episode of the Global Dispatches podcast recently. The featured guest was Dr. Angela Chang, who discussed a groundbreaking study on the links between vaccines and poverty prevention. This is the first study that looks closely at the non-health impact of vaccines. It’s impressive: the research uses statistical modeling and analysis to…

    Photo of a smartphone, Apple earphones, and a cup of coffee