Sure, the Internet has given Barack Obama’s presidential campaign an incredible fundraising edge. But smart use of technology only partially explains the breathtaking numbers (over $260M raised, over 1.5M individual donors). Obama’s online fundraising strategy is possible only because of the Federal Election Campaign Act — ironically, the very legislation that pundits claim he now […]
Last week, as Hillary Clinton stood at the brink of suspending her candidacy, I changed my Facebook status to “Gene Koo respects and admires Hillary.” I meant this in all sincerity: I proudly supported Clinton’s Senate campaigns, and I marvel at what she accomplished in her historic run for President. But in less than an […]
Here’s another piece I wrote for the Rebooting America project:
Twentieth century mass media offered a first-pass solution to the problem of scaling democracy to a rapidly-growing American republic. Whatever its virtues, the solution that radio and television provided is incomplete. Mass media atrophied our understanding of democratic participation, offering instead a politics that mimics the […]
Like most students who dabbled in postmodern theory during college, I came away with a certain skepticism towards “truth,” yet managed to emerge with a belief — call it faith — that Truth was still out there. Stanley Fish offers a plot summary of the story so far in todays’ Times. As a practical matter, […]
As a user of the Adblock Plus add-on for Firefox, every time I visit the Daily Kos I’m asked to Subscribe! since I’m not contributing to the site by viewing ads. While I feel a bit of a freeloader, and I’d be OK with paying some nominal amount per visit, I also don’t feel particularly […]
Lewis Hyde outlined the “Encroachment on the Commons” now underway in the academy.
A basic dilemma facing educational fair use is that it’s stuck between too much specificity (cutting out potentially fair uses) and too much vagueness (leading teachers to avoid risk by stopping far short of fair use). To the extent that specific guidelines are […]
With feedback from my colleagues at Berkman, I have some major upgrades to my rather testy post yesterday. I think I’ve distilled my critique of the NY Times’ (and other MSM newspapers’) foray into blogging, or perhaps better to say into the Internet, into the following points:
Journalists’ professional integrity depends in part on public perception. […]
When blogging first erupted into the World’s Wild Web, practitioners declared a revolution in media affairs: bloggers would bring journalism to the people. No longer would MainStream Media hold magical sway over our minds, because (1) MSM had been revealed to be biased and unfair, and (2) journalists’ “professionalism” actually stands in the way of […]
