WeChat: From Medium to Mediator

WeChat: From Medium to Mediator

China’s omnipresent app regulates much of society. Will it be a blueprint or cautionary tale?

By Chris Neels | January 22, 2020 | Culture, Economics, Government, Media, Policing, Privacy, Society | Beijing, Cashless, Censorship, China, Cybernetics, Dissent, Economics, Free Speech, Freedom, Information, Mediation, Metadata, News, QR Codes, Ride Hailing, surveillance, Tracking, Virtualization, WeChat

Google Becomes Evil

Counter to its positive mythology, Google manipulates search results to suit its own corporate purposes, quashing free access to information on the Web.

By Tom Valovic | October 16, 2019 | Ethics, Journalism, Media, Privacy, Society | Algorithms, Alternative Voices, AlterNet, Carey Gillam, Censorship, Control, Disinformation, Filtering, Fraud, Google, Harrassment, Information, Mercola.com, Monopoly, Monsanto, Search Engine, The Guardian, YMYL

Print Preview: Issue #4 | Fall 2019

Our fourth print issue—covering issues of identity, censorship, Internet infrastructure and more—is about to ship nationally.

By Mo Lotman | September 5, 2019 | Cognition, Culture, Government, Identity, Media, Philosophy, Privacy, Psychology, Relationships, Review, Society | Book Recommendations, Censorship, China, Eric McLuhan, Identity, Infrastructure, Internet, Katherine Birbalsingh, Marshall McLuhan, Protest, Public Space, Selfie Murals, Selfies, Smartphones, surveillance, The Cloud

Podcast #21: Betsy Brunner on Circumventing Censorship

Betsy Brunner of Idaho State examines social media and social movements, particularly in China, where she’s looked at the creative ways people get around the limits of surveillance and censorship.

By Mo Lotman | October 22, 2018 | Culture, Government, Human Rights, Media, Podcasts, Policing, Privacy, Society | Activism, Censors, Censorship, China, Creativity, Dystopia, Images, Language, Memes, Obfuscation, Protest, surveillance

Literary Twitter: Marketing, Shaming, & Censorship in the World of Publishing

Twitter has become deeply integrated into the literary world, creating a vastly different dynamic between authors and readers.

By Lucy Uprichard | December 6, 2017 | Community, Culture, Media, Publishing | Agents, Amazon, Bestseller Lists, Bestsellers, Celeste Ng, Censorship, Criticism, Cyberbullying, Donna Grant, Engagement, Fiction, Followers, Goodreads, Handbook for Mortals, Harlequin Teen, Jonathan Franzen, Lani Sarem, Laurie Forest, Literary Agents, Literary Criticism, Literary Twitter, Literature, Marketing, Pressure, Publishers, Publishing, Rebekah Fitzsimmons, relationships, Sarah Schulman, Self-Promotion, Shaming, Social Media, The Black Witch, The New York Times, Twitter, Valerie Peterson, Virginia DeBerry, Young Adult, Zadie Smith