Political Communication & New Media

Interesting Video and article involving Facebook statistics and the reach it has with over 500 million users. It's quick and very informative on the power of Facebook.

25 minute video featuring a discussion of Clicktivism aka Slactivism that we mentioned in class as part of the discussion of the Morozov video and the new media skeptic perspective in general. (This is posted in case you are interested in some aspect of this topic, not required!).

A prominent human rights activist, Nabeel Rajab, has been arrested in Bahrain on charges of inciting protests by using social networking websites. He was reportedly detained on arrival at Manama's airport on Saturday after returning from a conference in Beirut.

This is the article Su handed out in class Thursday

Search customization - just a few details about our ever-changing filter bubble 

A good fact to keep in mind as you write your papers.

This is an example of how twitter can be used during mass emergencies or disasters which relates to Starbird and Palen's article on (How) will the revolution be retweeted? This article is about how a body of students tweeted about a shooting at UT austin reaching over 15000 posts after the incident. This shows how twitter can spread important news and will reach a wide range of individual's through common words, such as (in this case) 'gunman' and 'shooter'.

Interesting article about how a Greek political party is growing and getting almost all of its support via online.

Interesting article discussing how Amazon will be creating their own television shows. Thought it was fun article that shows the progression of new media forms.

Research by Gilad Lotan about how the Kony 2012 campaign spread via Twitter and how it was different from past political campaigns.

Several are interested in the Trayvon Martin coverage, and in general, you should know that Pew comes out with these reports about who is paying attention to particular stories in the news every week so they might have something on your topic. 

Article discussing a newly approved cybersecurity bill. Debate over whether or not it is protecting citizens privacy.

It is an interesting journal article by Dan Schiller on China's control over communication and information because of the firewall they have placed on the internet. It is a more economical perspective, taking into account the global implications this might have for their economy. I liked it because it took what was happening in China and shed light on different issues and repercussions.

Facebook and the line between public & private space

Data about Facebook use from Pew's surveys of US users

I like the section titled "characteristics of facebook users" because it surprised me. It was interesting to see how facebook usage correlated to overall social connectivity, assuming that the study is talking about a person's entire social network (including acquaintances, coworkers, etc). I had assumed some people might use facebook exstensively because they didn't have a lot of other strong connection in their social network (offline).

This articles focuses on the usage of social media and curators

This article speaks to the information echo chamber that we could be trapping ourselves in by only using recommendations of our friends and family.

This shows the use of the word Serendipity in the books that Google has scanned organized by year - a very useful tool if you're talking about the use of a word over time.

Another indication of how important Facebook is these days -- this could possibly make a difference if people do post this

Interesting story about shifting norms and shifting news coverage of a new technology -- cars.