Category Archives: new media

Fact-checking the president:  A study in post-truth

Posted on June 1, 2020 by thefifthwave

“What is truth?” Pontius Pilate asked, and famously did not hang around for an answer.  Lately I have been asking, Pilate-like, about “post-truth” – and the answers, if they exist, are also hard to get at. Post-truth is an old … Continue reading →

Posted in democracy, new media | 6 Comments

Google looks on the face of the public, sees the pictures inside its corporate head

Posted on January 5, 2016 by thefifthwave

Enter Public and Elites, Fighting In the struggle that defines our moment in history, the correlation of forces, I have argued, pits public against elites.  The public is any group of ordinary people that, in Walter Lippmann’s words, is “interested in … Continue reading →

Posted in new media, the public | Leave a comment

Andrey Miroshnichenko’s review of The Revolt of the Public

Posted on March 17, 2015 by thefifthwave

Andrey Miroshnichenko is the author of Human as Media, a book I have cited often in this blog.  He and I became connected as fellow scholars who turn out to have an astoundingly similar perspective on the impact of media … Continue reading →

Posted in analysis, new media, the public | Leave a comment

Trolls and the trolled

Posted on December 2, 2014 by thefifthwave

You enter a dark forest and encounter a stranger.  You both carry something of value.  Neither of you can appeal to the police for protection.  What happens in the dark forest stays in the dark forest, forever. How should you … Continue reading →

Posted in new media, the public, web | 1 Comment

A social media beheading

Posted on August 22, 2014 by thefifthwave

Sometime last week, James Foley, an American free-lance journalist, was beheaded by a masked individual who claimed to belong to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).  This was a moral and political atrocity, requiring frank talk about … Continue reading →

Posted in new media, Uncategorized, visual persuasion | Leave a comment

The fall of the house of Graham

Posted on August 21, 2013 by thefifthwave

The Washington Post is my hometown newspaper.  I read it for many years as part of my daily routine, and until the paywall came down I continued to read the sports pages in search of tidbits about my beloved Washington … Continue reading →

Posted in new media, newspaperss | Leave a comment

Politics and the culture of the web

Posted on January 7, 2013 by thefifthwave

The latest issue of The Economist carries a longish essay on “The new politics of the internet” – in essence suggesting that web activism today may be at a take-off point, comparable to the birth of the environmental movement after … Continue reading →

Posted in cataclysm, new media, web | Leave a comment

Social media and the presidential elections

Posted on February 16, 2012 by thefifthwave

On Tuesday I made my way to a glass office building near Metro Center, which hosted a discussion by four youthful journalists on “Politics and Technology.”  Despite their employment in a doomed profession, the panelists were knowledgeable, articulate, and intelligent … Continue reading →

Posted in new media, the public | Leave a comment

Unfriending the dead

Posted on December 8, 2011 by thefifthwave

Some months ago, a member of my family died who had an intermittent presence on Facebook.  At her husband’s request, the profile was taken down.  This made sense.  The deceased had left few traces of herself online, and bumping into … Continue reading →

Posted in new media, web | 4 Comments

Naked privates: Jeff Jarvis and the joy of publicness

Posted on November 11, 2011 by thefifthwave

My daughter played a display piano in our pharaonic shopping mall, and received five dollars from a passer-by:  a funny incident.  The next day, we related the story to our son who is away at school, but it was already … Continue reading →

Posted in new media, the public | 2 Comments