Jeremy B. Merrill and Jamiles Lartey report Trump’s Crime and Carnage Ad Blitz Is Going Unanswered on Facebook (‘The president has spent millions on misleading Facebook ads targeting undecided voters, while Joe Biden has been virtually silent’): With unprecedented protests around race and policing dominating the news all summer, it was all but certain criminal justice would emerge as a key…
Social Media
Conspiracy Theories, Culture, Disinformation, Education, Social Media
Facebook Discussions as Displays of Ignorance, Fallacies, and Marginal Literacy
by JOHN ADAMS • • 3 Comments
In communities in the Whitewater area, assorted Facebook pages (particularly) are a significant means of messaging about politics, culture, etc. Too often, these messages are evidence of ignorance, fallacies, and are poorly written (to the point of only marginal literacy). Over time, as these rural communities have suffered relative economic decline, they have also experienced a…
Authoritarianism, Freedom of Speech, Law, Liberty, Social Media, Trump, Twitter
Twitter’s (Perhaps Momentary) Advantage Over Trump
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Trump, furious at a private company for exercising its right under the law to establish and enforce terms of service, now finds that Twitter has again placed warnings on another of his tweets, and also on his attempt to retweet that same message from the White House account. The recent Twitter response to a Trump…
Cats, Social Media
Friday Catblogging: Cat influencer launches his own podcast
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Bilbo The Cat is a bold entrepreneur. Without any help other than whatever small assistance his human mother Ellen Murray provides, Bilbo has created a popular Twitter account and spread his delightful image from his Belfast home to feeds across the globe. Now, knowing that any good media empire must include a video or audio…
Babbittry, CDA, Culture, Economy, Fortitude, Local Government, Marketing, New Media, New Whitewater, Newspapers, Politics, Press, Social Media, Writing
What Can Be Done About Rural Newspapers (Even Though It Probably Won’t Be)?
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
Yesterday I wrote that Another Local Paper Changes Hands. With the failure of legacy publishing, what are rural communities to do? (Obvious point: FREE WHITEWATER is not an online newspaper – never aspired to be, never will be. This is a website of independent commentary: aligned with no faction, beholden to no faction.) A few…
Babbittry, CDA, Government Spending, Local Government, Marketing, New Media, Public Relations, Social Media
Wasting Money on Whitewashing Marketing
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
America, Babbittry, City, History, New Media, Newspapers, Press, Social Media, Writing
The Media’s ‘Post-Advertising’ Future
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Nationally and locally, the media (whether profit or non-profit) continue their significant transformation: the decline of print, the rise of (interactive) digital media, and the collapse of a middle-of-the-road partnership of boosterism between mediocre newspapers and middling officials. Print’s doomed, and so is digital that merely repeats the same banal style of contemporary print. Traditional…
Propaganda, Russia, Social Media, Twitter
The Ongoing Battle Against Russian Trolls
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In The trolls are winning, says Russian troll hunter, Charles Maynes reports on the long – and sometimes inside – struggle against online Russian trolls: The journalist and 33-year-old mother of two, [Lyudmila] Savchuk started noticing websites and social media accounts attacking local opposition activists in her hometown of Saint Petersburg with a frequency she…
Health, Social Media, Weird Tales
Dangers Imagined and Real
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Taylor Lorenz writes of unjustified worries about the ‘Momo Challenge’ in Momo Is Not Trying to Kill Children (‘Like eating Tide Pods and snorting condoms, the Momo challenge is a viral hoax’). Lorenz has made a career of observing and reporting on social media trends, and reassures that On Tuesday afternoon, a Twitter user going…
Newspapers, Press, Radio, Social Media, Television
Brookings on ‘7 trends in old and new media’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
The liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, in a paper from Elaine Kamarck and Ashley Gabriele, offers insight into 7 trends in old and new media. Their seven observations are solid, and broadly similar to the assessments of Clay Shirky, in Last call: the end of the printed newspaper. Brookings summarizes their work: The following are seven essential truths about the news today…
City, Culture, Press, Social Media
On Trends in Whitewater’s Media
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
If print’s in decline (and it is), then what’s next for Whitewater (or other small towns)? I’ve contended that a new Whitewater is inevitable. We’ve passed the beginning of that process, and are now in a middle time toward a new city. There are years yet ahead, but most now living in Whitewater will one…