“On a digital network, public space is not a place (like Facebook), it is the interconnection of sovereign spaces owned and controlled by individuals.”

– What is the Small Web

https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/#fn:4

#SmallWeb #publicSpace #publicSphere #townSquare https://mastodon.social/@Daojoan/114049881597268650

Serbia protesters mark three months since deadly roof collapse | National https://www.byteseu.com/708008/ #activism #Advocacy #belgrade #CivilDisorder #Conflict(process) #Conflicts #FreedomOfAssembly #HumanRights #MilošVučević #NoviSad #partners/afp #PoliticalEvents #PoliticalMovements #Politics #ProtestMarches #Protests #PublicSphere #Serbia #SocialConflict #SocialMovements #violence

Agenda-setting by mass media, social/ media literacy and the climate

"97% of adult Australians have limited skills to verify information online – new report. We also found many people accept content at face value, mostly based on their “gut feeling” or emotional response, rather than questioning the content".

"Accessing reliable and trustworthy information enables citizens to make informed decisions about everything – from voting, to making purchases, to staying safe online, to accessing health advice and services...Unlike many advanced democracies such as the Netherlands or Finland, Australia doesn’t have a national media literacy policy or strategy to ensure citizens are provided with support to help them verify information online."
>>
https://theconversation.com/97-of-adult-australians-have-limited-skills-to-verify-information-online-new-report-243595

The significance of media consumption on climate opinion

"Our study has ... identified that patterns of consumption of ABC and Sky News predict climate opinion, with more consumption of ABC aligning with agreement with pro-climate action opinions and more consumption of Sky News aligning with disagreement with pro-climate action opinions. We further identified a consistent relationship between climate opinion and frequency of consuming ABC and Sky News, with higher consumption of ABC News aligning with stronger pro-climate opinion and higher consumption of Sky News aligning with weaker pro-climate opinion."
>>
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074301672400250X

Greens to call Murdoch executives before Senate inquiry into greenwashing>>
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/dec/04/greens-to-call-murdoch-executives-before-senate-inquiry-into-greenwashing-ntwnfb
#MediaLiteracy #information #credibility #accuracy #framing #MassMedia #MSM #online #SocialMedia #SocialNetworking #platforms #AI #AgendaSetting #citizens #PublicSphere #democracy #EngagedCitizenship #ClimateDisruption #climate #FossilFuels

"The purpose of this report is to analyse the role of digital platforms in contemporary media environments, including public perception of the benefits and problems they bring, especially when it comes to news and information about politics.

Overall, we find evidence for what we call ‘platform ambivalence’. This refers to the fact that many people use platforms for news and information about politics, while also remaining sceptical of the information they see there, and concerned about misinformation, bias, privacy, freedom of expression, and tech power. At the same time, people also appreciate the wider societal and personal benefits, such as easy access to information and staying connected with friends and family.

The report focuses on five platform types: (i) social media, e.g. Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok; (ii) search engines, e.g. Google, Bing, and Yahoo!; (iii) video networks, e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, and Dailymotion; (iv) messaging apps, e.g. WhatsApp, WeChat, and Facebook Messenger; and (v) generative AI chatbots, e.g. ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity."

https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/what-do-people-want-views-platforms-and-digital-public-sphere-eight-countries

Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, and Habermas were right about everything. But, having survived (or not; may Walter Benjamin’s memory be for a blessing) the Nazi (and proximate) terror, they didn’t have a plan to fix it. How do we fix it? https://newrepublic.com/post/188197/trump-media-information-landscape-fox #publicsphere #cultureindustry #cultureconsumingpublic 1/2

#StephanVanErp - #Culture in the #ModernWorld

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u04bxQC1Lg8

"The blogosphere
could be a modern realisation of Jürgen Habermas’s idea of “the public sphere” because it was open to all, everything was discussable and social rank didn’t determine who was allowed to speak. But..the speed and comprehensiveness that tech corporations such as Google and Facebook would enclose that public sphere with their own walled gardens in which “free speech” could be algorithmically curated while the speakers were intensively surveilled and their data mined for advertising purposes."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/05/the-blogosphere-is-in-full-bloom-the-rest-of-the-internet-has-wilted-dave-winer
#blogosphere #SocialMedia #WalledGarden #fiefdom #PublicSphere #Agora #writing #CounterPublics #SocietalDebates #Commons #OpenSource

Right now there's a pre-order sale for my next book, coming in early June from WW Norton. This summer, you will definitely want #storiesareweapons as an antidote to American psyops and culture wars.

It's 25% off today and tomorrow at Barnes and Noble!!

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stories-are-weapons-annalee-newitz/1144065538?ean=9780393881516

Here's the info:

Customers can easily join the free B&N rewards program and then get your book for 25% off when they enter the code PREORDER25 at checkout online

This week in #POL204 we went looking for examples of people engaging in public sphere discussions (in the Habermassian sense).

So we looked on social media and comments of news articles for people having good-faith discussions using rational arguments in order to come up with solutions for societal issues.

It was quite hard to find them.

Tom Tanuki had a go at it too, kind of.

#TomTanuki #PublicSphere #Habermas

https://youtu.be/5y1ydTXdSe4

#PublicSphere #MediaStudies: "“The” public sphere is now irretrievably fractured into a multiplicity of online and offline, larger and smaller, more or less public spaces that frequently (and often serendipitously) overlap and intersect with one another. This diverse array of what have been described variously as public spheres, public spherules, platform publics, issue publics, or personal publics nonetheless serves many of the same functions that were postulated for the public sphere itself. However, while the communicative structures, functions, and dynamics of many such spaces have been studied in isolation, we still lack a more comprehensive model that connects such case studies in pursuit of an overarching perspective. This article sets out a fundamental toolkit for the development of such an empirically founded model of the contemporary spaces for public communication. It identifies the crucial conceptual building blocks and empirical approaches that may be combined to produce genuinely new insights into how the network of such spaces is structured, and in turn structures our everyday experience of public communication." https://academic.oup.com/ct/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ct/qtad007/7199747?login=false

I just reminisced about the incredible collapse of #myspace circa #2007 and how basically everyone walked away from it when #facebook opened up to non .edu #emails ... It was hard to leave behing my #top8 and all the #random #RVA community "friend" connections that I had made, but between the emerging #WordPress #neighborhood #blogs ( around #2008 ) and #craigslist and #local #hashtags on #twitter , I soon forgot about #Tom. This #history gives me hope that there will soon be enough #mastodon (or other #socialMedia ) adoption so citizen #journalists and regular people can contribute #news to the #publicSphere. That's my hope, anyways, as I #grieve all that Twitter was and now isn't. Feel free to #REPOST! or comment on this thread!

#histodons ! Join us on Twitter next Thursday, Nov. 24, 4:15pm CET for a talk by

Benoît Carré: "Dukes & Princes for Freedom: #Courtiers, #Pamphlets & #PublicSphere in Pre-#revolutionary #France (1788- 1789)".

PM for Zoom link.

More on his project on the #SociétéDesTrente & how he intends to integrate the database "Mapping #Print, Charting #Enlightenment #DigitalHumanities Project
by reconstructing patron-client networks here:

https://papa.uni-trier.de/persons/304/