The concept of “misinformation” has gained currency as the way to describe a problem of large numbers of people believing things that are not true. If “misinformation” is the problem,…
I don’t think the current issue of misinformation online is an outcome of “propagandists” running riot, nor is it just a problem of people being stupid or “not thinking critically”…
I started looking for a cartoon based on the opening lines of Neil Postman’s book Amusing ourselves to Death recently, only to find that the cartoonist had taken the original…
Last year I had the good fortune to go overseas for an international conference: the 9th STS Italia Conference. I haven’t really placed myself well academically as yet, so presenting…
“Improvements in communication…make for increased difficulties of understanding.” — Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication Mark Zuckerberg’s 2021 announcement that Facebook was now a “Metaverse” company has drawn interest and discussion…
I dislike the term “cancel culture”. Specifically, I detest the “culture” part of it, with the barely-concealed accusation that the use of “cancelling” is a specific cultural phenomenon arising from…
Recently, local newspaper the Australian published a cartoon about Kamala Harris where the punchline was that mentioning a person’s race is supposedly racist, in a bid to highlight the supposed…
Confession: I have only passing knowledge of the details of what the term “capitalism” means. The media studies tradition which I have studied most closely tends to divide up epochs…
As seems to happen with the vast majority of blogs started with good intentions, I have let this one fall by the wayside. In an era of Twitter, Facebook and…
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