We rarely see residents of a city successfully push back in defence of their needs against the power of finance capital, which seeks to make money from the city. But Barcelona shows it can be done.
A mural in memory of Alton Sterling, who was shot several times at close range by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on July 5, 2016.
W. Clarke/Wikipedia Commons
Neither the spurious ‘facts’ about killings of police nor the supposedly ‘colour-blind’ logic of the backlash against Black Lives Matter hold up under scrutiny. Instead, they confirm its point.
Political groups of all stripes recognise the enormous power of online mass persuasion, one meme at a time.
Fibonacci Blue/flickr
Each individual act of posting, linking, commenting and liking may look insignificant up close, but they add up. There is enormous power here for mass persuasion, one viral share at a time.
Global media systems cannot effectively contribute to social progress until opportunities are more widely shared.
Internet.org by Facebook/Facebook
Global media systems cannot effectively contribute to social progress until opportunities not just for access, but also for active participation, are more widely shared.
Shifts in our communication infrastructures have reshaped the very possibilities of social order driven by markets and commercial exploitation.
Marc Smith/flickr
Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science
Capitalism has become focused on expanding the proportion of social life that is open to data collection and processing – as if the social itself has become the new target of capitalism’s expansion.
Welcome to the 2016 Iowa Caucus.
DonkeyHotey/flickr
This article is part of the Democracy Futures series, a joint global initiative with the Sydney Democracy Network. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies…
Bridging the digital divide in many developing countries is not simply about access to ICT.
flickr/Matt Wilson
An individual may remember and forget what he or she likes, but once a version of past events is accepted and shared by a group, as a collective construction, it is on public record.
Blogger and media critic Anita Sarkeesian in a Feminist Frequency video.
from www.feministfrequency.com
Cyberhate would deny women their full democratic rights as citizens, yet this is trivialised and dismissed – just as sexual violence, discrimination and workplace harassment have been for decades.
Nothing of what William’s subjects had in life escaped the Domesday Book. Today, more covertly, those in power are using mass surveillance to collect all the digital details of our lives.
Flickr/Andrew Barclay
Almost 1000 years after their ruler demanded every detail of serfs’ lives, the digital age and mass surveillance are creating a new and undemocratic imbalance between citizens and those with power over them.
Notions of the ‘right to know’ forced Hillary Clinton to defend her use of a private email account as secretary of state - a far cry from the days when citizens didn’t even know how their representatives voted.
EPA/Andrew Gombert
The idea of the right to know as the ‘lifeblood of democracy’ is a surprisingly modern development. And in an age when transparency is prized, privacy and secrecy can still be justified in many cases.
Apple’s global network control has helped it achieve bumper profits.
Andrey Bayda / Shutterstock.com
The latest round of quarterly results have recently come out and the likes of Apple and Boeing have announced bumper profits. Others such as Sainsbury’s and Samsung have not fared so well. So what is it…
Hong Kong’s digitally connected protesters are mounting a thoroughly modern campaign for democracy, but the state too has updated its mechanisms of control and surveillance.
EPA/Alex Hofford
In the closing decades of the last century, many political and business elites were swept up in a global wave of policies favouring free markets, deregulation of business and finance and privatisation…
Senator John Faulkner’s call for political parties to re-engage with Australians through social media is laudable, but his own efforts illustrate how much politicians have to learn.
Facebook/John Faulkner
After his speech about party renewal last week, I went to Labor Senator John Faulkner’s Facebook page. It has about 2700 likes. The page features links to speeches and pictures of events that Faulkner…