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Suggestions from other platforms:

The Every by Dave Eggers

The Four by Scott Galloway

Future Politics by Jamie Susskind

The Circle by Dave Eggers

Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The first 2000 Years by Tom Standage

The Naked Diplomat by Tom Fletcher

Black Mirror (TV)

Från världskrig till nätkrig by Jonathan Lundberg

How Politics Got So Polarised by Elizabeth Kolbert (article)

What Can America Learn from Europe about Regulating Big Tech by Nick Romeo (article)

Facebook's Broken Vows by Jill Lepore (article)

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Feb 4, 2022·edited Feb 4, 2022Liked by Tom Moylan

Okay, I'm going to try and do some counterbalancing here by only listing women writing in this space. They sometimes consider media more generally rather than just social media; there are also some recommendations of gentle feminist literature that may in turn affect how you communicate/campaign. After all, the personal is political!

Shoshana Zuboff - The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. A modern classic.

Pippa Norris - Women, Media, and Politics. A series of essays.

Emily Ratajkowsi - My Body. An autobiography that talks a lot about performativity and Instagram.

Carina Chocano - You Play the Girl. How discourses create and recreate gender roles.

Emma Jane - Misogyny Online. What it says. I think this one was even open access?

Caroline Criado Perez - Invisible Women. A wall of facts that will change the way you approach the world.

Amanda Montell - Wordslut. This is SUPER interesting and readable. She's a linguist, so covers word use and messaging etc.

Lisa Feldman Barrett - 7 and a half lessons about the brain. Just essential knowledge that will help you avoid reiterating popular but inaccurate assumptions about our brains and how they work.

Catherine D'Ignazio - Data Feminism. The most data-focused, but does go a bit into machine learning and biases. Despite the name, it is intersectional in approach.

Gretchen McCulloch - Because Internet. I'm reading this one right now and it's great. She's another linguist, and talks about how the internet and social media are changing how we communicate. She also talks about the different types of internet audiences and what kinds of language they use/understand.

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I'll share a few things that formed my thinking a lot in the past year:

books:

- You Are Here - Whitney Phillips & Ryan Millner

- This is not Propaganda - Peter Pomerantsev

reports and deepdives:

- An Illustrated Field Guide to Social Media: A look at alternative logics for social media published in connection with “Reimagine the Internet” https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/an-illustrated-field-guide-to-social-media

- Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2314.html

on norm enforcement (aka witchhunts) on TikTok:

- "I’m the TikTok Couch Guy. Here’s What It Was Like Being Investigated on the Internet." https://slate.com/technology/2021/12/tiktok-couch-guy-internet-sleuths.html

- "west elm caleb and the feminist panopticon" https://internetprincess.substack.com/p/west-elm-caleb-and-the-feminist-panopticon

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Feb 4, 2022Liked by Tom Moylan

It's always worth going back and re-reading The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord - it gets truer with every passing year.

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Feb 14, 2022Liked by Tom Moylan

Hi, I enjoyed 'New Power' from Timms and Heimans.

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Some recommendations perhaps not listed.

The Tyranny of Structurelessness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness

Rather influential observation, observations which recur quite regularly as seemingly novel on the topics of forums, social media groups and any unstructured network.

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Twitter and Tear Gas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_and_Tear_Gas

Fantastic book, that is probably the most succinct explanation of the nature of internet born movements, the speed of formation but also the inherent lack of durability. The internet grants speed and convenience but the politics of change requires persistence. The common flow of information creates a sort of borderless cultural space but lacking in durable structures.

Side note, I recommend Zeynep Tufekcis substack too.

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The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

https://books.google.pl/books/about/The_Revolt_of_the_Public_and_the_Crisis.html

Reduced intermediate authorities mean the internet via its inherently lower transaction costs circumnavigates old assumptions on how messages and communication works.

A good summary of the key arguments of the book

http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/shorter-martin-gurri/

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Masters of the Word: How Media Shaped History

William J. Bernstein

Places the internet in terms of its communication impact in context, around the falling cost of informational distribution, access to informational tools and the ability to easily spread one's own message

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On the internet you are generally reading a minority within a minority.

Nearly everyone is a lurker.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)

Related

Most of What You Read on the Internet

https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_of_what_you_read_on_the_internet_is_written/

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The average opinion of 10k people in SF

https://vicki.substack.com/p/the-average-opinion-of-10k-people

The nature of the internet unchecked is to become an extremification machine, it hollows out the middle and makes things similar, while the edges become more extreme. This happens on whatever dimension you wish to track when left to its own devices.

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Facebook is Other People

https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/facebook-is-other-people

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Aggregation Theory and the consequences of removing the marginal distribution cost of information

https://stratechery.com/concept/aggregation-theory/distribution-and-transaction-costs/

This theory is heavily influential on the minds of many

venture funds, investors and startups currently.

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Tried to come from a different side of things, less academic perhaps but rather more personal, someone who's partially a citizen of the internet. After having been immersed in the avalanche of information that the dancing blades of the interwebs provide for about 20 years, one starts to notice patterns.

From old school forums, IRC chats, hacking cultures, Bizzaro collections of niche websites, to the now much more organised era of key platforms. Can't shake the feeling that much of what is written about trying to understand the internet is written by normal people who occasionally visit this weird land. Like an anthropologist in a foreign land, who never sticks around to really learn the language and culture.

Because once you spend enough time observing it the overwhelming sense is that nothing is new, everything has happened before, but this time, rather than a minority of those overly engaged in internet discussion pre Web 2.0. The long term trend is that internet culture is just becoming culture everywhere. If we connect everyone, we connect all of their foibles, flaws and weakness, on top of all the good. Unchecked, lacking in immunity, the internet is an extremification machine.

Without regard to the underlying politics, it does not care. It will just extremifiy whatever musing, notion, idea or dream you have. Immunity can be developed, one does not have to succumb to terminal internet brain, but one has to understand its nature

Reading the random musing of some users from the 80s-90s Usenet days or late 90s - 00s forum days, you see just the same patterns. Nothing is new, it's just happening to everyone now.

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Feb 5, 2022·edited Feb 5, 2022Liked by Tom Moylan

Here are some texts I found useful:

- Castells, M. (2013). Communication power. OUP Oxford. Chapter 6.

- Kruikemeier, S., Gattermann, K., & Vliegenthart, R. (2018). Understanding the dynamics of politicians' visibility in traditional and social media. The Information Society, 34(4), 215-228.

- Barisione, M., & Michailidou, A. (Eds.). (2017). Social media and European politics: Rethinking power and legitimacy in the digital era. Springer. Chapters 2 and 3.

- Gainous, J., & Wagner, K. M. (2013). Tweeting to power: The social media revolution in American politics. Oxford University Press.

- Shirky, C. (2011). The political power of social media: Technology, the public sphere, and political change. Foreign affairs, 28-41.

- Guriev, S., Melnikov, N., & Zhuravskaya, E. (2021). 3g internet and confidence in government. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 136(4), 2533-2613.

- Strauß, N., Huber, B., & Gil de Zúñiga, H. (2021). Structural influences on the News Finds Me perception: Why people believe they don’t have to actively seek news anymore. Social media+society, 7(2), 20563051211024966.

- Gil de Zúñiga, H., Weeks, B., & Ardèvol-Abreu, A. (2017). Effects of the news-finds-me perception in communication: Social media use implications for news seeking and learning about politics. Journal of computer-mediated communication, 22(3), 105-123.

- Schmuck, D., Fawzi, N., Reinemann, C., & Riesmeyer, C. (2021). Social media use and political cynicism among German youth: the role of information-orientation, exposure to extremist content, and online media literacy. Journal of Children and Media, 1-19.

- Neudert, L. M., Howard, P., & Kollanyi, B. (2019). Sourcing and automation of political news and information during three European elections. Social Media+ Society, 5(3), 2056305119863147.

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Feb 4, 2022Liked by Tom Moylan

Currently on my reading pile: The System: Who Owns the Internet, and How It Owns Us by James Ball

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Hey Tom, have you thought uploading this list on Notion. Here's an example: https://victorianoi.notion.site/victorianoi/Learning-81054755c60d4d628e3f1cc7a95e4e7f

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One academic suggestion is Data Theory, by Simon Lindgren

https://www.adlibris.com/se/bok/data-theory-9781509539284

"In this experimental and provocative book, Simon Lindgren argues that a hybrid approach to data and theory must be developed in order to make sense of today's ambivalent, turbulent, and media-saturated political landscape. He pushes for the development of a critical science of data, joining the interpretive theoretical and ethical sensibilities of social science with the predictive and prognostic powers of data science and computational methods. In order for theories and research methods to be more useful and relevant, they must be dismantled and put together in new, alternative, and unexpected ways. "

A report worth a read is "Echo chambers, filter bubbles, and polarisation: a literature review" from the Reuters Institute at Oxford. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/echo-chambers-filter-bubbles-and-polarisation-literature-review

"In this literature review we examine, specifically, social science work presenting evidence concerning the existence, causes, and effect of online echo chambers and consider what related research can tell us about scientific discussions online and how they might shape public understanding of science and the role of science in society."

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Feb 4, 2022Liked by Tom Moylan

I'll recommend my own book, The Molecule of More. Co-written with one of my best friends, a psychiatrist, we explain the role of dopamine in motivation, persuasion, political interests, love, and more. It'll change the way you look at why people do the things we do -- I'm a speechwriter and writer by trade, and the work we did here transformed much of my approach to persuasion. https://www.amazon.com/Molecule-More-Chemical-Creativity_and-Determine/dp/1948836580/ref=sr_1_1?crid=LNLG0VLHDEOQ&keywords=molecule+of+more&qid=1643988955&sprefix=molecule+of+more%2Caps%2C86&sr=8-1

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Feb 4, 2022Liked by Tom Moylan

I like JRC reports very much. My favorite, although not that new, is the one on Understanding our Political Nature: How to put knowledge and reason at the heart of political decision-making, 2019: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC117161 There is also Technology and Democracy: Understanding the influence of online technologies on political behaviour and decision-making, 2020 https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC122023

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Feb 4, 2022Liked by Tom Moylan

Two recent podcast series have shone a spotlight on the intersection of social media and politics (among other things):

Jon Ronson’s Things Fell Apart (building on his book, So You’ve been Publicly Shamed).

And The Coming Storm about the storming of the Capitol and what led to it.

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Feb 4, 2022Liked by Tom Moylan

"The Revolution will not be Televised" by Joe Trippi, the Democrat campaign strategist and probably the earliest user of the Internet for political campaigning. It's an oldie - from 2004 - but gives a really good insight into the early days of online political campaigning, particularly Trippi's management of Howard Dean's bid for the US Presidency

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Feb 4, 2022Liked by Tom Moylan

For some more Nordic views on social media and freedom of speech - this time in English - I recently discovered this Danish professor: https://twitter.com/M_B_Petersen/status/1483457679800651787

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Feb 4, 2022Liked by Tom Moylan

Arghh!! My original (long) comment has not been saved. In short again:

Good morning,

"Videocracy" by Kevin Allocca. It is about YouTube and the effects it has/had changed the world.

"Das Internet muss weg" by Schlecky Silberstein. Think the eBook allows for auto translation... Anyways, it is about Internet consumption and media literacy.

Best from Berlin 😀

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More additions by mail and message:

Coronapolitics from the Reichstag to the Capitol: https://bostonreview.net/articles/quinn-slobodian-toxic-politics-coronakspeticism/

Richard Seymour's The Twittering Machine

Retooling Politics: How Digital Media Are Shaping Democracy

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