Departments

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Internet Culture

  • 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.

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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).