UPI: 50 U.S. medical, science organizations launch group to fight health misinformation. “Called the Coalition for Trust in Health & Science, the group brings together reputable associations representing American academics, researchers, scientists, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, drug and insurance companies, consumer advocates, public health professionals and even medical ethicists.”
Reuters: Reuters reporters’ online accounts faked to approach China activists. “Two Reuters journalists had their identities faked by an unknown person or people who then used sham social media accounts to engage with Chinese activists on several online platforms over several months.”
Cornell Chronicle: Website sheds light on 19th century Black literary culture. “The site includes 700 poems [Charline] Jao discovered and transcribed from periodicals managed by Black editors in New York City. The site is searchable by publication, title, description, author and other parameters. The website also includes collections of poems focused on themes — from deaths and elegies to hymns and songs to British poets and women poets. Another section showcases a large collection of online and textual resources.”
University of Delaware: Mellon Foundation grant supports UD Library project focused on 20th-century poet-activists of color. “The University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press was recently awarded a $250,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to support the curation and stewardship of poetry archives related to 20th-century poet-activists of color along with a digital publishing and poet-in-residence project that draws on these collections.”
Business Insider: Twitter mistakenly filtered the accounts of Chinese activists following layoffs in Asia, report says. “Twitter mistakenly filtered the accounts of a number of Chinese human rights activists after the company’s Asia office saw its workforce reduced amid global staff cuts, The New York Times reported.”
New York Times: The Toll That Twitter’s Glitches Is Taking on Chinese Activists. “As the Elon Musk-owned social media service encounters interruptions and bugs, Chinese dissidents and activists said they feared they were being muzzled.”
Library of Congress: Library Opens New Web Archive Collection, Features Programs for Black History Month. “A new web archive collection from the Library of Congress documents the civil unrest sparked by the police murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. The Protests Against Racism Web Archive contains a selection of websites documenting protests against racism and police brutality against Black people, as well as grass roots movements and activism calling for police reform.”
Bloomberg: Google Workers Stage Rallies Against Job Cuts, Low Wages. “Google employees staged protests on both US coasts this week to call attention to labor conditions for subcontracted workers and support thousands of co-workers who were recently laid off.”
San Francisco Chronicle: 50 years of powerful Bay Area posters collected by Oakland library go online. “Before the internet age, artists, community leaders and organizations in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood would drop off posters at the library that highlighted educational classes for the community, protests and cultural events in the Bay Area. Over the past 50 years, the librarians at the then-called Latin American branch – the first branch in the U.S. dedicated to the Spanish-speaking community – archived and have since collected more than 250 posters, a majority of them stored in boxes. This year the library unveiled a digital version of the collection on its website.”
PA Media: Trump baby blimp inflated again to establish ‘how best to preserve it’. “The return of the Donald Trump baby blimp, the huge inflatable depicting the former US president in a nappy and clutching a mobile phone, has begun with a test inflation by the Museum of London. A conservation analysis of the blimp has led staff at the museum, its ‘final resting place’ after it took to the skies above Parliament Square during protests over Mr Trump’s state visit to the UK in June 2019, to blow the balloon up once again.”
New-to-me (launched in October) from New Zealand Herald: Ocean photography project Project Kahurangi launched to give non-profit conservation groups a boost. “The library, which has over 1200 professional-quality images and videos, launched in October with the help of Live Ocean Foundation, another conservation-focused non-profit started by America’s Cup champions Peter Burling and Blair Tuke. The content is free for fellow non-profit advocacy groups, as well as iwi, governments and education institutions looking to promote ocean conservation.”
WMUK: The Western Activist, a 1960s-era student newspaper published at WMU, is now online. “In the 1960s, students at Western Michigan University published an anti-war, countercultural newspaper. Now the Western Activist, as it was known, has been digitized. The paper covered the Black Panther movement and protests against the Vietnam War among many other topics.”
WIRED: Tech Workers Fight for Iran Protesters as Big Tech Plays It Safe. “Google’s Iran response has frustrated some employees, rights groups, and US lawmakers. They want the company to deepen its support, including by opening up cloud computing and software development tools to people inside Iran to help protesters communicate securely and circumvent government internet firewalls.”
The Guardian: Saudi prosecutors seek death penalty for academic over social media use. “A prominent pro-reform law professor in Saudi Arabia is facing the death penalty for alleged crimes including having a Twitter account and using WhatsApp to share news considered ‘hostile’ to the kingdom, according to court documents seen by the Guardian.”
Associated Press: China Suspends Social Media Accounts of COVID Policy Critics. “China has suspended or closed the social media accounts of more than 1,000 critics of the government’s policies on the COVID-19 outbreak, as the country moves to further open up. The popular Sina Weibo social media platform said it had addressed 12,854 violations including attacks on experts, scholars and medical workers and issued temporary or permanent bans on 1,120 accounts.”
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