Jonathan Franzen, dubbed the Great American Novelist by TIME magazine, isn’t a fan of ebooks—nay, he sees them as corrupting our values, undermining all that’s good and holy about the printed word and its place in society. But what caught my attention about this report on his comments at a writing festival recently wasn’t so […]
Media can reinforce and support agencies of socialization and agents of control – such as parents, educators, the state. At the same time, media can be viewed as potentially disrupting, undermining or otherwise threatening the established way of doing things in society. This fundamental premise – outlined most clearly in Denis McQuail’s unparalleled work on […]
Software developers have been playing an increasingly crucial, if unseen, role in anti-SOPA/PIPA protest activities. According to data compiled by Fight for the Future, “super easy to use” WordPress plugins like Simple Stop Sopa (written by Brooke Dukes) may have been employed by as many as 40% of the 115,000+ sites participating in Wednesday’s blackout. […]
New technologies make new economies, and new economies make new jobs. As a response to this, some of the most forward-thinking academic programs aim to prepare students for jobs that don’t yet exist, and more programs should follow their lead. Students of strategic communication–a catch-all term that includes public relations, advertising, integrated marketing communication and […]
a dialogue between Gina Neff, Tim Jordan, and Joshua McVeigh-Schulz (This is the first of Culture Digitally’s “dialogues.” Spurred first by comments by Gina Neff at the March 2011 workshop, and then by one of her blogposts, I asked if we could use an excerpt of that post as the opening salvo in a dialogue about […]