Internet Culture

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• SOURCE: Vox
  12/1/2022
  

  Pamela Nadell: US May be at High Tide of Antisemitism

  Antisemitism is less socially acceptable than in Henry Ford's day, but it's become much more acceptable since the rise of Donald Trump. Has America reached a tipping point where conspiracy theories and collective slanders of Jews are mainstreamed? Also feat. Kathleen Belew and Deborah Lipstadt.

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  12/1/2022
  

  Privacy Was Doomed by Imagining it as Property

  It's impossible to consider the full meaning of privacy in society because courts and popular culture have construed the term to mean a kind of property that can be properly or improperly appropriated by another, instead of a kind of social relationship. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/29/2022
  

  Historians Ask what the Decline of Nude Beaches Tells Us about the Internet's Influence

  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. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/16/2022
  

  If GOP Cared About Kids, it Would Protect them From White Nationalist Recruitment Online

  by Ibram X. Kendi

  Why aren't conservatives up in arms about the "grooming" of white youth by white supremacists in online communities? 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/3/2022
  

  A Science Historian's Decade-Old Nuclear War Simulator is, Unfortunately, Having a Revival

  Alex Wellerstein discusses how his interactive site allows users to see what would happen to a place hit by a nuclear warhead, and why this week many Americans have been "nuking" their own hometowns. 

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  2/14/2022
  

  Trolling History: Social Media Harassment From Abroad

  by Alexandra F. Levy

  In authoritarian regimes there are fewer and fewer safeguards for historians whose work challenges nationalistic myths; often harassment has a green light from the state. 

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• 12/19/2021
  

  Veracity or Virality? How Social Media are Transforming History

  by Jason Steinhauer

  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. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  9/26/2021
  

  How the Drive-By Truckers Hacked the Music Industry

  by Stephen Deusner

  Through lineup changes, record label hassles, and fans upset with their political lyrics, the Truckers have used the internet and social media to build support and survive for decades. Their story is a history of the changing business and a map for younger acts. 

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• SOURCE: Daily Beast
  9/12/2021
  

  Why are Historians Facing Online Abuse Over Whether Atlantis Existed?

  Archaeologists who debunked a popular television series interpreting Plato's references to Atlantis as fact instead of allegory soon discovered the affinity many eugenicists, neonazis and white supremacists have for the myth. 

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• SOURCE: Public Books
  9/14/2021
  

  The Melting of the American Mind: Internet Pop Psychology and the Authoritarian Personality

  by Maya Vinokour

  The internet and social media have worked to normalize and validate authoritarian and illiberal worldviews, making the mindset that baffled thinkers like Theodor Adorno in 1947 commonplace today. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  9/10/2021
  

  Another 9/11 Legacy? The Spread of Conspiracy Theories Online

  by Jeff Melnick

  9/11 happened as traditional American media outlets were being consolidated into a small number of corporate networks, encouraging people seeking information to turn to decentralized sources and, eventually, social media, opening space for misinformation and conspiracy theories. 

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  3/8/2021
  

  A New Group Promises to Protect Professors’ Free Speech

  Princeton's Robert George hopes that the new organization Academic Freedom Alliance can influence university administrators to resist online outrage campaigns from the right and left and protect the right of scholars to speak freely on controversial subjects. 

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  1/12/2021
  

  Teaching in the Age of Disinformation

  Despite many professors' confidence in their ability to foster discussion of controversial subjects, studies suggest avoidance is a much more common approach. Historian of political rhetoric Jennifer Mercieca works to make students more direct and purposeful consumers of news. 

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• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  12/8/2020
  

  When I Was Trolled, My Institution Got It Right

  by Susan M. Shaw

  As faculty work to engage the public more directly through social media and journalistic outlets, the potential increases for politically motivated trolling and outrage campaigns attacking faculty. Here's how institutions can support the intellectual freedom of their faculty without caving to outrage campaigns. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  8/28/2020
  

  Whose Anger Counts?

  by Whitney Phillips

  Many complaints about "cancel culture" depend on a false equivalency between left and right forms of internet argument that ignores the nature of far-right online harassment as a tool of power. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/7/2020
  

  Meet Your Meme Lords

  A small team at the Library of Congress, led by Abbie Grotke, is archiving internet culture as fast as it can (now, from home).