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A crowd of people holds a up red banner of the Cuban Revolution leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara

Remember When the U.S. Secretly Built a Social Network to Destabilize Cuba?

U.S.-funded social networks were launched in 2010 with ZunZuneo and Piramideo in 2013.
by Matt Novak via Gizmodo on March 15, 2024
Law and Political Economy Project logo

What Centuries of Common Law Can Teach Us About Regulating Social Media

Today, tech platforms, including social media, are the new common carriers.
by Ganesh Sitaraman, Morgan Ricks via LPE Project on February 26, 2024
Old computer with its mouse over the AOL logo.

America Online: A Cautionary Tale

On the rise and fall of the quintessential ’90s online service provider—and a warning about today’s social-media giants.
by Joanne McNeil via The Nation on December 15, 2022
Image of a young girl using an iPhone.

What Makes a Millennial?

The defining boundaries and problematic categorizations carried by our culture's treatment of the label "millennial."
by Sarah Wasserman via Los Angeles Review of Books on August 18, 2022

Future Historians Probably Won't Understand Our Internet, and That's Okay

Archivists are working to document our chaotic, opaque, algorithmically complex world—and in many cases, they simply can’t.
by Alexis C. Madrigal via The Atlantic on December 6, 2017

What Facebook Did to American Democracy

And why it was so hard to see it coming.
by Alexis C. Madrigal via The Atlantic on October 12, 2017

The Fake-News Fallacy

Old fights about radio have lessons for new fights about the Internet.
by Adrian Chen via The New Yorker on September 4, 2017

We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface in GIFs

Are you part of the problem?
by Lauren Michele Jackson via Teen Vogue on August 2, 2017
Shots from various conspiracy films of the 20th century.

The Life and Death of Conspiracy Cinema

Why did Hollywood lose interest in making paranoid thrillers? Was it a change in the culture? Or a change in the marketplace?
by T. M. Brown via The Nation on March 31, 2025
Stack of Newspapers.

A Brief History of America’s Campaign Against Dissident Newsmaking

On underground presses and state violence.
by Aaron Boehmer via Literary Hub on March 26, 2025

The End of Resistance History

What was the liberal #Resistance "Twitterstorian"? And what did commentators like Heather Cox Richardson morph into during the Biden years?
by Charlotte Rosen via Protean on January 20, 2025
A drawing of a person staring at two different smartphones, with robotic arms holding their head in place.

What If the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction?

From the pianoforte to the smartphone, each wave of tech has sparked fears of brain rot. But the problem isn’t our ability to focus—it’s what we’re focusing on.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on January 20, 2025
Trad wife dresses in six different colors.

My Babies Are Richer Than Yours: On the Lie of the Online Tradwife

A new theory of the leisure class influencer.
by Lauren Carroll Harris via Literary Hub on January 10, 2025
Illustration of an octopus with a "no talking" symbol, with its tentacles around the globe.

How Cancel Culture Panics Ate the World

A set of peculiarly American anxieties has spread across continents.
by Samuel P. Catlin via The New Republic on November 25, 2024

How Entertainment Mangled Public Discourse

Neil Postman’s jeremiad against TV seems rather quaint today—and not just because he was shouting into the wind and knew it.
by Katha Pollitt via The New Republic on November 20, 2024
A homesteader woman feeding chickens.

Some Country for Some Women

As women stretch themselves thin, homesteader influencers sell them an image of containment.
by Kim Hew-Low via The New Inquiry on September 26, 2024
Harris on a tv screen.

TV Still Runs Politics

Just about every major development in the current presidential campaign started as a television event.
by Paul Farhi via The Atlantic on August 22, 2024
An eye in the shape of the United States.

The Weaponization of Storytelling

The American public is more susceptible than ever to skewed narratives.
by Colin Dickey via The New Republic on June 27, 2024
Samuel Pepys, by John Hayls, 1666.
partner

Peeping on Pepys

For more than two decades, a community of committed internet users has been chewing over the famous Londoner’s diary.
by Caroline Wazer via HNN on June 11, 2024
partner

Alt Text

A brief history of the textfile, and the production of conspiracy theories on the internet.
by Walter J. Scheirer via HNN on May 8, 2024
Collage of security camera image and newspaper articles from the Columbine shooting.

The Columbine-Killers Fan Club

A quarter century on, the school shooters’ mythology has propagated a sprawling subculture that idolizes murder and mayhem.
by Dave Cullen via The Atlantic on April 19, 2024
Skyscraper construction workers at lunch photo, but sitting atop a web search bar.

Social Media Is Not What Killed the Web

Better browsers made things worse.
by Ian Bogost via The Atlantic on March 25, 2024
Photo of a female jogger drinking water out of a pink metal water bottle.
partner

Your New Year's Resolution to Drink More Water Has a History

Our water bottle obsession speaks to deeper historical trends.
by Emily J. H. Contois via Made By History on January 2, 2024
Henry Grady’s Vision of a “New South.”

Civil War Memory, Reconciliation, and Social Media: A Cautionary Tale

The importance of contextualization and critical evaluation in historical analysis.
by Kevin M. Levin via Civil War Memory on December 26, 2023
Close-up of the safety trigger on a handgun

“Come and Take It”: How the Aftermath of Sandy Hook Led to More AR-15s Being Sold Than Ever Before

Chris Waltz was appalled. He felt Democrats were using the Sandy Hook tragedy to tell him he wasn’t responsible enough to own an AR-15.
by Cameron McWhirter, Zusha Elinson via Literary Hub on October 2, 2023
Collage of BuzzFeed logo and people using electronic devices.

They Did It for the Clicks

How digital media pursued viral traffic at all costs and unleashed chaos.
by Aaron Timms via The New Republic on April 18, 2023
White pillars broken in pieces, forming an X.

The Right Side of History

How should historians respond to the urgency of this current political moment?
by Emma Green via The New Yorker on March 7, 2023
Collage of eyes.

Who’s Watching

The evolution of the right to privacy.
by Marina Manoukian via The Baffler on December 1, 2022
Black and white photo of a 1920s flapper girl.
partner

Flappers: Precursors to Modern-Day Social Media Influencers?

A 1923 article in a fashion magazine shows the connection between flappers and social media youth organizers today.
by Jason Ulysses Rose via HNN on August 7, 2022
Collage of a hand raised up toward major conservative Christian figures throughout American history.

The Evangelical Question in the History of American Religion

The disturbing conclusion might just be that evangelicalism does not exist.
by Kirsten Sanders via The Hedgehog Review on July 23, 2022
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