We are facing a coordinated international fascist movement that works with explicit backing from Moscow, Washington, and tech monopolies, and is propagating itself through its own media apparatus. Yet people who claim to side with democracy keep doing work to support Fascintern media because they misunderstand how it works. This needs to change.
Media Media
The authoritarians are winning, we can all see that. It wouldn't be the worst thing if the pro-democracy camp stopped being naive about social media.
Old Tricks, New Tech: How Legacy Media Capture Fuels Today’s Digital Authoritarianism
Marius Dragomir and Minna Aslama Horowitz discuss how digital authoritarianism is rising as states and Big Tech align, threatening independent media.
Fascism Depends On The Presumption Of Good Faith
The media's sanewashing of the Trump regime is fueled by this presumption
Who are the rightwing influencers filling Trump’s head with visions of antifa?
Meet the content creators whose videos from Portland and Chicago shape the president’s distorted view of reality
Palantir's social media manifesto is a blueprint for technofascism
The surveillance firm’s viral X post calls for hard power, conscription and the end of pluralism. AI expert and academic Mark Coeckelbergh on what happens when technology becomes the gateway to authoritarianism
Social Media Vs Democracy
The Rise of the Right-Wing Media Machine
This conservative media machine now rivals—and may well surpass—the power and the influence of the old-line press. It holds sway over much of the national agenda, deciding which ideas and...
The Rise of the Right-Wing Media Machine
This conservative media machine now rivals—and may well surpass—the power and the influence of the old-line press. It holds sway over much of the national agenda, deciding which ideas and...
How One Nation bypassed media and conquered Facebook in its political rise
As an editor based in Griffith, I’m familiar with the rituals of modern campaigning: press releases, media calls and candidates eager for coverage. One Nation’s Farrer strategy broke that pattern entirely.
Data Feminism for AI
Attacks on women and trans people are not happening in a vacuum. Communications scholars W. Lance Bennett and Marianne Kneuer recently argued that we are witnessing the intensification of "illiberal public spheres" around the world (Bennett and Kneuer, 2023). These are characterized by a set of anti-democratic communications tactics that include the denigration and exclusion of minoritized people, targeted attacks on the press and political institutions, and transgression of norms of civil discourse. Such tactics are enabled and amplified by the social media platforms owned by Big Tech, whose business model elevates attention above all other metrics, such that they profit richly off extremism, threats, spectacle, and lies. The success of this corporate partnership with right-wing extremism is evident in the proliferation of book bans (Magnusson, 2024), the demonization of DEI and critical race theory (Crenshaw, 2022), and mob tactics to doxx, intimidate, misrepresent, and otherwise silence people that study misinformation, speak out against racial and gender violence, or rule against insurrectionists (Edmonds, 2024). At the same time, we have seen the continued work of feminists, including Latin American, Indigenous, and abolitionist feminists in the US and globally, doing the work of imagining alternate worlds (Cullors, 2021; Davis, 2022; Ricaurte, 2019; Simpson, 2017). This paper represents our own first attempt to imagine a more equitable, sustainable, feminist world for AI research.
We're getting the social media crisis wrong
The bigger problem isn't disinformation. It's degraded democratic publics
We're getting the social media crisis wrong
The bigger problem isn't disinformation. It's degraded democratic publics
Do social media threaten democracy?
Facebook, Google and Twitter were supposed to save politics as good information drove out prejudice and falsehood. Something has gone very wrong
Fascism | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
The Washington Post is in fascist-guided free fall
Former Murdoch employees have taken over. Now corruption and scandal abound.
The authoritarians are winning, we can all see that. Maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't be the worst thing if pro-democracy people stopped being ridiculously naive about social media. berjon.com/media-media/
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