As the hostage crisis in Sydney came to a dramatic, deadly end, people were flooded with information. The siege at the building in the city’s Central Business District is over and the gunman is dead. The…
On an overcast afternoon in London in May 2013, an off-duty soldier named Lee Rigby was murdered near his barracks in Woolwich, southeast London. Rigby’s killers were two young British men of Nigerian…
Behavioral scientists have seized on social media and their massive data sets as a way to quickly and cheaply figure out what people are thinking and doing. But some of those tweets and thumbs ups can…
My last article looked at how social media stocks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are overpriced unless these companies manage to boost their revenues several times over. Given their business model…
In late 2013 I was invited to present evidence, as part of my submission regarding online anti-Muslim hate, at the House of Commons. I attempted to show how hate groups on the internet were using this…
During the magical month of December 2013 teachers across the UK were given an early Christmas gift from the least expected donor. Twitter buzzed with the news. I first saw it thanks to @teachertoolkit…
Peta Mitchell, Queensland University of Technology; Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology; Darryl Woodford, Queensland University of Technology y Katie Prowd, Queensland University of Technology
The G20 Summit that brought many of the world’s most important leaders to Brisbane last weekend was also a major Twitter event. Australian and international users expressed their concerns over the appearance…
The Women, Action and the Media (WAM) activist group announced on Friday a collaboration with Twitter to address online harassment of women, which it claims has “reached crisis levels”. The group, concerned…
For more or less any topic we can think of, social media has great potential for both good and harm. One example is suicidal distress. It is increasingly common for people to express despairing and suicidal…
Video games, Jane Austen, and a Welsh footballer: it might seem these three have nothing in common, but all have been the basis for online abuse targeted specifically at women. Of course, both men and…
According to figures from the Home Office, only 42 arrests were made for “racial or indecent chanting” at English football matches during the 2012-13 season. Considering that the total number of attendees…
Whatever you do, don’t turn to Twitter for news about Ebola. The volume and tone of tweets and retweets about the disease will make you wish you were watching the zombie apocalypse of The Walking Dead…
ISIS is winning the propaganda war, it’s been said, and top brass from the European Commission, EU member state governments, and representatives of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft have met to discuss…
No need to beat about the bush. There is another tech bubble in the United States. The relationship between the share prices and profits of US tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is at unsustainable…
Brenda Leyland, a 63-year old woman from Leicestershire who had been accused of publishing a stream of internet abuse about the family of missing child Madeleine McCann, has been found dead in a hotel…
A steady infiltration of scientists onto Twitter has accompanied the growing recognition that a social media presence is just as important as taking the podium at a conference. Social media is leading…
Standing on a stage in San Francisco in early 2010, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that as internet users had become more comfortable sharing their lives online, privacy was no longer a “social…
When an author who insists he is “not really a social media animal” writes a Twitter story, we should at least raise an eyebrow. When that same author goes on to say he wrote the story at his publisher’s…
Booker-shortlisted novelist David Mitchell is currently launching his new short story The Right Sort – on Twitter. The award-winning author of Cloud Atlas and number9dream is tweeting his story twice daily…
On Sunday, Germany held the World Cup aloft after scoring a goal in extra time. Somewhat surprisingly, the final wasn’t the most tweeted event of the 2014 tournament: that title went to Germany’s demolition…