shouting loudly

[I posted some early thoughts on TBTK here] There’s a particularly interesting passage midway through Too Big To Know, under the section heading “book-shaped thoughts,” where Weinberger deals with the apparent contradictions of authoring a book that argues for the strength of networks over books: I am aware that it is at best ironic, and [...]

Conservative media activist Andrew Breitbart died suddenly last night.  Given the amount of time I’ve spent talking about him on this blog and in the classroom, I felt I should post something about it. Conservative media sites are heralding him as a fallen hero today.  Progressive sites are being polite and circumspect, as is appropriate. [...]

David Brock and Ari Rabin-Havt (of Media Matters) have a new book out, titled The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned A Network Into a Propaganda Machine.  It is engagingly written and well-researched, offering a booklength compilation of the research drumbeat Media Matters has produced over the past eight years. According to the authors, the Fox [...]

(caveat emptor: this blog post is aimed at the academic research community.  We’ll return to your regularly scheduled publicly-oriented blog posts shortly) I received an interesting action alert in my inbox this morning.  It came from “Natalie Foster, Rebuild the Dream,” and was titled “Mr. President: Fire this man.”  Here are the important parts: Dear [...]

There’s a fun anti-Citizens United video that made the rounds last week (see below).  It features big thinkers explaining problems with the campaign finance system, while goofing around with Internet memes –  keyboard cat, geyser videos, kids being cute, etc.     I like the video.  It’s not going to get a million views or [...]

So… this happened yesterday.  It’s too early to pronounce SOPA firmly dead, but clearly the blackout proved to be an epic tactical win. The blackout worked on three levels.  First we have the immediate stated goal: educate site visitors about SOPA/PIPA and encourage them to contact their Member of Congress.  This is basically a souped-up [...]

I’ve just started reading David Weinberger’s newest book, Too Big To Know.*  For those who don’t know his work, Weinberger is one of the big thinkers at the Berkman Center.  I’m a longtime fan… his first couple books provided an influential push toward my current field of research. In the prologue, he raises the following [...]

Justin Elliott has an interesting post up at Salon today.  It concerns “The Freedom Community,” a secret e-mail list made up of conservative journalists and policy-types.  I can’t say much more about the list itself, because it’s secret.  Its very existence has been scrubbed from Google-Groups since he contacted one of its participants with questions. [...]

…Seriously, there is no excuse for frequent visitors of Shouting Loudly to not also be reading David Meyer’s commentary at Politics Outdoors.  He just negated two posts that I was planning to write, because he went ahead and wrote them better. The second post, “Occupy Wall Street Needs an Exit Strategy” is particularly important.  The [...]

Okay, let’s be clear #OccupyWallStreet has gotten awesome.  There are now solidarity occupations in 250+ locations nationwide.  Labor Unions and the Netroots are fully onboard, and yesterday afternoon’s march in NYC had somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 participants.  As Jon Stewart put it last night, the media attention has gone “from blackout to frenzy.”  Impressive [...]