Since 2009, the Slender Man has been growing in popularity as an emergent, groundbreaking Internet horror myth. It entered the broader popular consciousness in May 2014, when two twelve year old girls led a third girl into a wooded area and stabbed her numerous times. The Slender Man takes on important cultural meanings in the […]
I’m excited to announce the publication of a special issue of Digital Journalism that I guest-edited around the theme “Journalism in an Era of Big Data: Cases, Concepts, and Critiques.” I was fortunate to work with a terrific set of contributors. Their work sheds important light on the implications of data and algorithms, computation and quantification, for journalism as practice and […]
At the invitation of Culture Digitally and with the permission of my publisher, MIT Press, I am thrilled to provide the introduction of my just-out book, Low Power to the People: Pirates, Protest, and Politics in FM Radio Activism. (With bonus pictures not in the book!) Though the book is centered on FM radio activism, issues of digitality loom large. […]
[This is an excerpt from a longer essay, forthcoming in the Westminster Papers on Communication and Culture special issue, “The Internet and the Material Turn” — Volume 10, Issue 1, April 2015.] For millions of people around the world, social media systems now represent a central, material-semiotic mode of relation. Choosing to befriend someone and not someone […]
It’s easy to forget the larger, community benefits of an Open Internet that doesn’t discriminate based on the content flowing through the fiber (or however it gets to you). But let’s get specific. How does this open network nurture and support underserved and marginalized LGBT communities and why does something like Net Neutrality matter […]