Ramesh Srinivasan, Associate Professor at the Department of Information Studies & Design at UCLA and the Director of the UC-Wide Digital Cultures Lab, has just penned, under the imprint of New York University Press, an important new manuscript on the global shaping of technology and culture. Combining the sensitivity of an anthropologist, the clear prose […]
In April last year, my first book, Social Media and Everyday Politics, was published. It was based on the various research projects I’d carried out for my PhD and beyond, between 2008 and 2015. I’m very proud of it, particularly in attempting to challenge my own work and perspective by featuring a wider range of […]
“Sitting Here in California”: Introduction On February 16, 2017, Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg published an unprecedented 5,732-word post, “Building Global Community.” Observers—many of whom appropriately termed Zuckerberg’s missive a “manifesto”—soon noted troubling aspects of his vision for Facebook’s role in the world. In this essay, I add to that response by discussing, in […]
This was originally posted to an excellent new blog, “First 100 Days: Narratives of Normalization and Disruption” run by the Program on Science, Technology & Society at Harvard University, as part of their “Expertise and Public Trust Project”. See their call for posts to contribute. On January 25, just five days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, chief White […]
Amid all the rancor of the 2016 election, fake news emerged as a rare unifying force, one equally decried by the incoming and outgoing presidents, journalists and pundits across the political spectrum, and even those who stand to gain financially from the proliferation of false information. The problem of fake news has yielded a growing […]