Today Online: Thai police charge founder of new party over Facebook speech. “Thai police on Monday charged the founder and two members of a new political party opposed to military rule with violating a computer crime law, an offense that could result in a five-year jail sentence, a fine of 100,000 baht ($3,062.79) or both.”
social change
Wired: How Bots Ruined Clicktivism
Wired: How Bots Ruined Clicktivism. “The art of clicktivism—the use of social media to organize, support, or promote a cause—isn’t new, of course. For close to a decade now, activists and political organizations have used technology to capitalize on social ties and trust by turning friends into messaging amplifiers: Click to automatically email your member of Congress; click to share this funny video ad with your Facebook friends. But around the time of the US presidential election in 2016, it became apparent that fake people were also participating in clicktivism.”
Technical .ly: Media Mobilizing Project wants to create a digital archive of its activism history
Technical. ly: Media Mobilizing Project wants to create a digital archive of its activism history. “The latest project out of activism nonprofit Media Mobilizing Project is an online repository of its digital history. With the Philadelphia Social Movement Archive, the West Philly organization looks to digitize hundreds of video tapes and establish sturdy backups of around 30 terabytes of documentation from its 13-year history, making it searchable and accessible to other groups working on similar causes.”
Washington Post: Memphis police used fake Facebook account to monitor Black Lives Matter, trial reveals
Washington Post: Memphis police used fake Facebook account to monitor Black Lives Matter, trial reveals. “Bob Smith said he lived in Oxford, Miss. On Facebook, he “liked” pages for Black Lives Matter, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Memphis Voices For Palestine, Mid-South Peace and Justice, and comedian Rickey Smiley, according to images obtained by The Appeal. ‘I’m not a cop,’ he wrote in a private Facebook message to one activist, adding that he would be interested in attending protests in the Memphis area, but it was a bit of a drive. In lieu of a profile picture, he uploaded an illustration of a Guy Fawkes mask. That’s because ‘Bob Smith’ wasn’t a person of color, as he had claimed online.”
MIT Technology Review: How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump
MIT Technology Review: How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump. “To understand how digital technologies went from instruments for spreading democracy to weapons for attacking it, you have to look beyond the technologies themselves.” A deep and scary dive.
Al Jazeera: How social media shaped calls for political change in Ethiopia
Al Jazeera: How social media shaped calls for political change in Ethiopia. “A look at Ethiopia’s new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and the hope for media reform.”
BBC: Cambridge University anti-women students ‘confetti and rockets’ digitised
BBC: Cambridge University anti-women students ‘confetti and rockets’ digitised. “Confetti and fireworks, collected at an 1897 street protest opposing women’s rights to get university degrees, are to be digitised for public record. They date from a demonstration in Cambridge held by male students opposed to student equality.”
