While past surgeons general succeeded in warning the public away from cigarettes and drunk driving, other public health issues have been more difficult subjects for persuasion.
As new restrictive legislation in many states threatens the teaching of African American history, the example of southern Freedom Schools is being followed in local and online communities.
Tech historian Margaret O'Mara says that the social platform keeps work-addicted (and sometimes gossipy) politicos connected all the time, making it both an emotional and instrumental necessity.
Twitter heavyweight Kevin Kruse says there is a danger that proposed changes to account verification could erode trust on the site, which could make him bail out. Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mark Anthony Neal note many scholars like them have invested too much in their networks to make the decision lightly.
What happens when an unserious person has serious power over public discourse? We must take Musk more seriously than he seems to take anything himself.
Historians of naturism Sarah Schrank and Stephen L. Harp believe that the panoptical nature of social media is eroding a longstanding divergence between European and American attitudes about nudity in public spaces, particularly among young women.
Twitter "can be a terrible place, but it is also a place that – at least for me – has been far more welcoming and supportive of my academic pursuits than academia itself ever managed."
Musk is delusional if he thinks that Twitter can function without moderation. The problem this highlights is the ability of a small number of billionaires to make the decisions that shape the contemporary public sphere.
Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr. is at the brink of winning the presidency in the Philippines, partly because of social media campaigns denying the atrocities committed by his father's regime.
Westerners are likely to shun Russian propaganda and mock its falsehoods; social media network research suggests that Russia isn't interested in convincing Westerners, and it may be reaching its intended audience quite effectively.
"The terrain of combat has changed, digital images are just as important as ammunition and digital platforms are just as important as factories and military hardware."
"Because extremist ideas are no longer limited to an isolated, lone-wolf fringe, the United States needs a public health approach to preventing violent extremism."
Violence in the Capitol a year ago called to mind events like Preston Brooks's brutal caning of Charles Sumner. But a closer look shows that, like today, antebellum politics were disrupted and made volatile by revolutions in communciation technology.
History is a growing content category on social media, but history content going viral has very little to do with its quality or reliability. The author of a new book on history on social media says historians and readers need to understand how political agendas and content algorithms are shaping history on the web.
