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Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 21, 2013 47 Comments
Yesterday was the worst Twitter day of all time. Or at least the worst that I remember. Some lady no one had ever heard of and who had about 100 followers at the time sent the Tweet above. The tweet went viral.  Some guy at Gawker is claiming credit for finding it, although a lot of people credit the big viral boost to someone at Buzzfeed who has over 100,000 followers: https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/414103011464454145 https://twitter.com/danielwein/status/414103716892250112 https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/414420362042941440 Whoever started it, plenty of websites picked up on it and ran with it to feed the mob and not miss out on clicks and eyeballs. By the time I saw it, long after she became a hunted woman, my first impression was similar to that of John Nolte at Breitbart.com: Looks like the type of "white privilege" claptrap we read almost weekly at Salon.com or Slate.com.  Some liberal white person coming to grips with her privilege and wanting the whole world to know about it.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on November 15, 2013 2 Comments
Pew Research is out with another installment on its study of News Use across Social Media Platforms, some of which may be helpful to activists in the political grassroots movement. Facebook leads the way as a social media platform for news consumers.  64% of US adults are on Facebook, with 47% of those using the site to obtain news - this translates to 30% of the US population using Facebook as a source of news. Though in a previous Pew Research report (noted below), most indicated they do not necessarily go to Facebook seeking out news, rather, they get the news while they're there for other reasons. In contrast, only 16% of US adults use Twitter, with just over half of those using it for news, which translates to 8% of the population using Twitter as a source for news.  And while reddit's users are very active news consumers, a very tiny fraction of the US population is even using reddit at all. From the Pew Research report:
The proportions who get news, combined with the total reach of a site, show how many U.S. adults are learning about events and issues through each social networking site. Facebook is by far the largest social networking site among U.S. adults, and with half of its users getting news there, is also the largest among U.S. adults when it comes to getting news. As discussed in an earlier report, roughly two-thirds (64%) of U.S. adults use the site, and half of those users get news there—amounting to 30% of the general population. YouTube has the next greatest reach in terms of general usage, at 51% of U.S. adults. Thus, even though only a fifth of its users get news there, that amounts to 10% of the adult population, which puts it on par with Twitter. Twitter reaches just 16% of U.S. adults, but half (8% of U.S. adults) use it for news. reddit is a news destination for nearly two-thirds of its users (62%). But since just 3% of the U.S. population uses reddit, that translates to 2% of the population that gets news there.
social-media-news-users twitter-news

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 11, 2013 44 Comments
A conversation I had with myself on Twitter this morning. Just because I could. (added) Be sure to read Anne's study on how embarrassed Republicans were of the Republican Brand long before the current "shutdown," New study sheds light on why Republicans won’t call themselves Republican. Also available on Storify. https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/statuses/388635508047216641 https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/statuses/388635827816771584 https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/statuses/388636232642600960 https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/statuses/388636692166348800

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 20, 2013 26 Comments

or more precisely, who they really are. Allan Brauer, Communications Director for the Sacramento Democratic Party wished Amanda Carpenter's children slow painful deaths from incurable diseases (via Twitchy): Amanda Carpenter, by the way, used to be a speech writer for Jim DeMint, and now is a speech writer...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on September 18, 2013 15 Comments

Researchers studying China's equivalent of Twitter have found that anger tends to be the most influential emotion on the social network.  It spreads the fastest and most broadly, more than several other categories of emotion.  The findings could offer insight into studying how information spreads...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 18, 2013 6 Comments
With a news cylce measured in seconds and minutes, not even hours, there are plenty of mainstream media mistakes, as I wrote yesterday, One lesson for mass killings: Don’t trust media reports for at least 24 hours. Piers Morgan, for example, ran wild over the fact that the shooter used an AR-15, except it turned out the shooter didn't. So Morgan deleted some of his inaccurate and embarrassing tweets about the use of an AR-15 in the Navy Yard shooting.  In so doing, Morgan both deleted inaccurate information and his own political embarrassment. That makes it harder for people (like me) to address Morgan's politics on gun control -- evidence has been removed from the internet. Well, fortunately, Twitchy grabbed the screen shots before Morgan's deletion: Twitchy Morgan AR-15 deleted tweets But in many cases, someone's Twitter or blog history is important in itself. With a blog entry, one can update and correct, as Buzzfeed did yesterday, and Google Cache often (but not always) saves the original.  But with Twitter, there is no ability to change the tweet itself, only to issue a new tweet correcting the prior (Morgan has not done that, btw), and it is much harder to reconstruct deleted tweets. The same issue exists as to the NY Daily News' now infamous Cover which was sent out on Twitter, and resulted in this conversation: https://twitter.com/brithume/status/380086436835241984 https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/status/380312186456793088

Posted by Mandy Nagy on September 04, 2013 1 Comment

If you've ever tried to use Twitter search to find someone's old tweet, you've likely been disappointed to find that the results leave you digging through only the most recent tweets, and that's if they even match your search terms at all. I've mentioned previously in...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on September 01, 2013 6 Comments

Edward Snowden and the NSA debate seem to have lost some significant momentum on Twitter in light of the current discussion about what the US will or won't be doing about the situation in Syria. Business Insider noticed that Syria Tensions Have Knocked The NSA Spying...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 17, 2013 20 Comments
Remember when Joan Walsh of non-tokenist Salon.com kicked off an intra-progressive Twitter war after writing:
“I deeply resent people who insist that white progressives who criticize Obama are deluding themselves that they’re his ‘base,’ when his ‘base’ is actually not white progressives, but people of color.”
Sure you do, Dem Base Fractures Into Twitter War And Charges Of Racism Against Professional Left: https://twitter.com/joanwalsh/status/55783212164718592 http://twitter.com/joanwalsh/status/55841811423436800 http://twitter.com/joanwalsh/status/55795875955478528 Nothing brings out the popcorn faster at LI than intra-progressive racial grievances. And this past week possibly was the largest bucket of popcorn ever seen upon the face of the Earth, with the hashtag #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen.   vid-spacer The guy they're talking about, Hugo Schwyzer, also is known as the Pasadena Porn Professor, who we have covered at College Insurrection, and you can read more about at The Other McCain. (By this point you're thinking, this is the weirdest Saturday Night Card Game post ever.) However it started, as convoluted as it was, the result was pure hysteria (via Al Jazeera)(click on the date of each tweet to see responses to it, some of which were more "interesting" than the tweet itself):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 10, 2013 23 Comments

We've all heard of the problems faced on Twitter with the #TwitterGulag resulting from false claims of harassment and/or spam. It's also a problem on Facebook, as detailed by Ruthie Blum (sister of John Podhoretz) at The New York Observer. Blum speaks of the problem faced by pro-Israel writers on Facebook...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 06, 2013 17 Comments

I wish I had put this list together myself. But the credit goes to John Nolte of Breitbart.com on Twitter. [View the story "Top Ten Things Media Found More Important Than al Qaeda" on Storify]...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on August 05, 2013 10 Comments

Over the weekend, we covered the news of Tony Wang, the general manager of Twitter UK, apologizing to women who have experienced abuse on its site, after a female UK lawmaker and several journalists received threats of violence. In the face of very public backlash over...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 04, 2013 43 Comments
I'm glad the Muslim Brotherhood is out of power in Egypt. From the inception of the 2011 protests against Hosni Mubarak, we warned that western media, particularly the NY Times and its writer Roger Cohen, misunderstood the threat of Islamist supremacy in the revolution. We were right, although the ability of the opposition to coalesce over a year later was a surprise, as was the military's willingness to get involved. It was the economy, stupid, and the MB's overreaching. That said, you can't ignore the fact that Mohamed Morsi was the duly elected President of Egypt. Call it a coup d'état or whatever you want, at least admit what just happened even if you like the result. Around the time Morsi was removed yesterday, I sent out a tweet listing respective percentage wins of Morsi and Obama in the 2012 elections which placed each of them in their presidencies. https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/status/352522811920756737 The reactions are below, but first, a quick poll, Was that an anti-Obama Tweet? (Poll closes midnight Pacific time tonight) There were some humorous reactions: https://twitter.com/BrettLoGiurato/status/352523874384089088 https://twitter.com/trentmwhite/status/352523298816540672

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 19, 2013 0 Comments
I don't know that @jeanassy says in these tweets, but it must have been really "good." Lebanese blogger questioned police tweets Assy, who describes himself as a web developer, allegedly is a supporter of the Free Patriotic Movement of Michael Aoun, which is part of the governing coalition along with Hezbollah and other parties. Via the Lebanese website Naharnet:
A Lebanese blogger has been questioned by the Internal Security Forces for his insulting tweets and not as reported for criticizing President Michel Suleiman. A careful examination of Jean Assy's twitter account reveals swearing and name-calling against Suleiman which go beyond society's morals and ethics. Defamation is a crime according to Lebanon’s penal code. The image grab of his twitter account published above and which shows his immoral tweets, is aimed at putting an end to the political reactions made by some parties under the excuse of defending freedom of expression. In reality his tweets are morally degrading and do not fall under the framework of freedoms. Politicians and not only the judiciary have a duty to preserve the post of the president out of respect for social values. Assy was on Tuesday briefly seized by the ISF's Office to Combat Cyber Crimes to question him on the series of tweets he has made. No charges were brought against him. “Some people are attacking me for the "insults" I wrote, while I'm pretty sure they say things even worse about the president and others offline,” he has said in one tweet.
Al-Akhbar English further reports:
Jean Assy said he was summoned to the cyber crimes office in Beirut and questioned over Tweets calling the head of state an “akrout,” which roughly translates to “hooligan” or “delinquent.” “I was called in for an investigation. I didn’t know it was about bashing the president. So I came today and was shocked to learn that it was about tweets I made a few months ago,” he told Al-Akhbar shortly after his release. According to him the investigation lasted for about an hour, but he was then held for another 4-5 hours before meeting with a judge. The judge asked him to sign a document vowing not to criticize the presidency, and then released him without charge.
Here's an interview with Assy, if anyone can translate, that would be great: Here are Assy's explanations in English on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeanassy/status/347005962026090496

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 08, 2013 26 Comments

I know you hate it when I mention Meghan McCain. I hate it too, it brings back memories of her bizarre and false claim that I made fun of her breast size. I didn't even write the post at issue, Kathleen did, and the post did...

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