Social Media Study

The public intellectual, as a person and ideal, has a long and storied history. Writing in venues like the New Republic and Commentary, such intellectuals were always expected to opine on a broad array of topics, from foreign policy to literature to economics. Yet in recent years a new kind of thinker has supplanted that archetype: the thought leader. Equipped with one big idea, thought leaders focus their energies on TED talks rather than highbrow periodicals.

A field guide to the visionaries and the fans who are reinventing the art of storytelling. Not long ago we were spectators, passive consumers of mass media. Now, on YouTube and blogs and Facebook and Twitter, we are media. And while we watch more television than ever before, how we watch it is changing in ways we have barely slowed down to register. No longer content in our traditional role as couch potatoes, we approach media as experiences to immerse ourselves in at will.

What is the new way to pump a phenomenon, so people tire of it or fear it? How can powerful entities water down opponent’s tea? How can powerful entities steamroll grand policy? With mass formation psychosis. In 2021, a few M.D.s ventured opinions about mass formation psychosis. The people who control the news media and the public schools have the ability to not only smother opposition. But to create an idiocracy that doesn’t question.

As consumers of art, and especially as fans, we have a host of tricky moral question to navigate: do the moral lives of artists affect the aesthetic quality of their work? In Drawing the Line, Erich Hatala Matthes argues that it doesn't matter whether we can separate the art from the artist, because we shouldn't. Matthes argues both that the lives of artists can play an important role in shaping our moral and aesthetic relationship to the artworks that we love and that these same artworks offer us powerful resources for grappling with the immorality of their creators.

In Just Faith, progressive Christian activist and writer Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons explains how a strong religious left has accompanied every major progressive advance in our society, and he resurrects the long but forgotten history of progressive Christianity in the United States that can and must link arms with progressive Muslims and Jews to make the moral case for pluralism, human dignity, and the common good. Graves-Fitzsimmons provides a blueprint for this type of resurrection based on his advocacy work at the intersection of religion and American politics.

Humanity is on an astronomical trajectory and according to aerospace professional and popular science communicator Kellie Gerardi, that future doesn’t rest solely on the shoulders of rocket scientists. Gerardi’s non-traditional path in the space industry shows us that humanity’s next giant leap will require the contributions of artists, engineers, and everyone in between. Gerardi takes us on a tour of this unique window in history and offers encouragement and advice for anyone who has ever dreamed of the stars and galaxies far, far away.

Using information in its everyday, nonspecialized sense, Michael Buckland explores the influence of information on what we know, the role of communication and recorded information in our daily lives, and the difficulty (or ease) of finding information. He shows that all this involves human perception, social behavior, changing technologies, and issues of trust.

"Uma mentira pode dar a volta ao mundo no mesmo tempo que a verdade leva para calçar seus sapatos." Mark Twain. Aos olhos dos seus eleitores, as deficiências dos líderes populistas se transformam em qualidades, sua inexperiência demonstra que não pertencem ao círculo da "velha política", e sua incompetência é uma garantia da sua autenticidade. As tensões que causam em nível internacional são vistas como mostras de sua independência, e as fake News, marca inequívoca de sua propaganda, evidenciam sua liberdade de pensamento.

The millions of fans who watch World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) programs each year are well aware of their role in building the narrative of the sport. #WWE: Professional Wrestling in the Digital Age explores the intersections between media, technology, and fandom in WWE's contemporary programming and business practices. In the Reality Era of WWE (2011 to the present), wrestling narratives have increasingly drawn on real-life personalities and events that stretch beyond the story-world created and maintained by WWE.

When Thurgood Marshall - the great-grandson of a slave - was born, African Americans were denied equal rights in America. Segregation was legal. Lynching was common. In some places, African Americans were entirely excluded from public life; they were forbidden to enter public parks and museums or use public swimming pools and restrooms. After being denied admission to the University of Maryland Law School because of his race, Marshall enrolled at Howard University. He graduated first in his class and set out as a young lawyer determined to achieve equality for all Americans.

Trans woman and screenwriter Tilly Bridges takes you through the trans allegories of the Matrix franchise, with deep dives into The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, The Animatrix, The Matrix Revolutions, and The Matrix Resurrections, tracking one person’s transition journey—from Thomas Anderson, to Neo… to Trinity. Each movie’s allegory is deeply layered, building from movie to movie, and speaks to a different aspect of trans existence.

Everyone deplores narcissism, especially in others. The vain are by turns annoying or absurd, offending us whether they are blissfully oblivious or proudly aware of their behavior. But are narcissism and vanity really as bad as they seem? Can we avoid them even if we try? In Mirror, Mirror, Simon Blackburn, the author of such best-selling philosophy books as Think, Being Good, and Lust, says that narcissism, vanity, pride, and self-esteem are more complex than they first appear and have innumerable good and bad forms.

Nev Schulman is the host of the wildly popular TV series Catfish which investigates online relationships to determine whether they are based on truth or fiction (spoiler: it's almost always fiction).

After her brother died unexpectedly and her mother moved into a dementia-care facility, spiritual travel writer and Episcopal deacon Lori Erickson felt called to a new quest: to face death head-on, with the eye of a tourist and the heart of a pastor. Blending memoir, spirituality, and travel, Near the Exit examines how cultures confront and have confronted death by investigating Egypt's Valley of the Kings, Mayan temples, Colorado cremation pyres, Day of the Dead celebrations, Maori settlements, and tourist-destination graveyards.

From Derek Hunter - one of the most entertaining political writers today - comes an insightful, alarming look at how progressives have took over academia, pop culture, and journalism in order to declare everything liberal great, and everything great, liberal. Progressives love to attack conservatives as anti-science, wallowing in fake news, and culturally backwards. But who are the real denialists here? There are three institutions in American life run by gatekeepers that have stopped letting in anyone who questions their liberal script: academia, journalism, and pop culture.

Without a doubt, Schopenhauer is one of the giants of Western philosophy. He represents a turning point from the quest to define the external world as something apart from our experience to a recognition of our experience as the medium of our world. Philosophy is a discourse, a conversation spread out over centuries that explores and develops different lines of thought. Schopenhauer embodies the moment in Western philosophy where the snake begins to eat its own tail, where the unreasoning insistence upon an external world is finally examined with due criticism and care.

Our children's first digital footprints are made before they can walk-even before they are born - as parents use fertility apps to aid conception, post ultrasound images, and share their baby's hospital mug shot. Then, in rapid succession come terabytes of baby pictures stored in the cloud, digital baby monitors with built-in artificial intelligence, and real-time updates from daycare. Unwittingly, parents, teachers, and other trusted adults are compiling digital dossiers for children that could be available to everyone - friends, employers, law enforcement - forever.

Your menstrual cycle is your fifth vital sign - a barometer of health and wellness that is as telling as your pulse or blood pressure. Yet most of us see our periods as nothing more than a source of inconvenience and embarrassment. The reasons for this are vast and complex and many are rooted in misogyny. The fact is, women the world over are taught the bare minimum about menstruation, and the messages they do receive are negative: That periods are painful and gross, that they turn us into hormonal messes, and that they shouldn't be discussed.

Disrupters shows what different women in business have done to reach success as they define it. From board members to CEOs to freelancers, the business world is stacked against women because they follow the unspoken rules of business culture made long before women entered the workforce. Tech executive, board member, and angel investor Dr. Patti Fletcher recognizes those rules and then showcases the women who have found success by breaking them.

Narratives about decision making are often inadvertently tailored primarily to men. Meanwhile, narratives about women in business overlook decision making or offer advice that is unhelpful and can even backfire. How Women Decide fills this gap. It takes on the very real psychological and cultural obstacles women face, asks how these affect decision making, and suggests practical changes for approaching important choices.