Category: Social Media & Networks

  • Discussion of Numbered Lives, Ch 2: Counting the Dead (Sarah Richardson)

    This post is part of the HASTAC Scholars Collaborative Book Discussion on Numbered Lives: Life and Death in Quantum Media (MIT Press, 2018), by HASTAC Co-Director Jacqueline Wernimont. — David Gurman’s installation, The Nicholas Shadow is a “real-time memorial” where the bell at St. Ignatius’s church would ring as a public performance marking every Iraqi […]

  • Numbered Lives Follow-Up Interview with Jacqueline Wernimont (Molly Mann)

    This post is part of the HASTAC Scholars Collaborative Book Discussion on Numbered Lives: Life and Death in Quantum Media (MIT Press, 2018), by HASTAC Co-Director Jacqueline Wernimont. Jacqueline Wernimont is the author of Numbered Lives: Life and Death in Quantum Media (MIT, 2018).  MM: You write that “Tabular and numerical media became the professional tools of […]

  • Hashtag Activism: Good or Bad for Civic Engagement?

    Social media has become a significant part of our daily lives and majority of us honestly can’t live without it. People, including myself, wake up every morning scrolling through social media accounts liking pictures, commenting, tweeting, etc. We get so caught up in likes, shares, and retweets, that we don’t even realize how much social […]

  • How Filter Bubbles and Fake News Affect Voting in America

      Voting and Democracy The United States has always been a country built on the idea of democracy and the involvement of the common citizen when it comes to government. Every election, political parties emphasize the importance of voting and the impact that an individual vote has on the final results. Voting has long been […]

  • Invasion of Privacy… or not?

    Invasion of Privacy… or not? Social Responsibility The connection being made between one’s online activity and how the internet takes this online activity and tailors’ the information you see on your media pages is happening in our everyday lives. Liking a page on Facebook turns into more pages like these being recommended to you and […]

  • Online Giving: How Social Media has changed the Game, and the Name

    Online Giving: How Social Media has changed the Game, and the Name

     In the past, nonprofits and fundraisers had to establish connections with donors through mail, or on the phone, or even in person! Yes, I said in person! I know, crazy right? Slowly, people, businesses, and nonprofits started creating social media accounts. This changed EVERYTHING! This connected everyone and connected people to all sorts of causes. […]

  • Me, Myself, & Echo Chambers

    Me, Myself, & Echo Chambers

    Heather Heyer.  This is a name you may or may not remember. Heather was a 32-year-old paralegal from Virginia.  She had a job.  She had friends.  She had a life.  That life was taken from her on August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia while protesting a white nationalist rally.  I guess that’s where we are […]

  • The Unseen Virtual Landscape of Conspiracy Theories

    The Unseen Virtual Landscape of Conspiracy Theories

    There are people who will tell you that the Earth is flat. It is not simply ignorance, and it is not a case of falling victim to fake news. The idea that our planet is not a sphere, and that scientists or the government or the media do not want us to know this, is […]

  • Are Algorithms Stunting Our Ability to Engage?

    It is important to remember that social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram all allow for creation and exchange of content .With this, it is impossible for our digital interactions to not intertwine with democracy because we are constantly being fed biased information. While this is happening all the time, we experience it […]

  • The State of Traditional News in the Digital Age

    Civic Engagement and Traditional News before Twitter Before social media, options for information receiving in order to be a more civically engaged person were limited. You could subscribe to certain newspapers or watch certain channels, but ultimately your options for receiving news were from well-established institutions that all meet the same type of standards. Sure, […]