Collin G Brooke

rhetoric is a metalanguage that describes and explains how language works.

I think we are trained, particularly on the left, to be critical of performance. And I feel we should be more honest in acknowledging that performance is crucial to politics. It doesn't mean it's the only factor––that policy or other factors don't matter. But it is a defining feature.

people who use social media frequently perceive significantly more political disagreement in their daily lives than those who do not.

The anthropologist David Graeber once wrote: “The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” The same is true of the Internet.

To exorcise a human problem, you must use a touch of naming magic.

when people place value on the role of evidence as a means of updating their beliefs, they are less likely to believe misinformation and conspiracy theories.

The story of Section 230 in the United States—and around the world, as other countries followed America’s lead in giving free rein to these American companies—is stunningly simple. Technology platforms had been given the freedom to sell the first consumer product ever that was absolutely immune from age-old common-law or modern regulatory oversight

Gamergate announced our new era, of American life shaped by social media’s incentives and rules, from platforms just beyond the outskirts of mainstream society.

we need both “effective public disapproval” and “the influence of a preponderant professional condemnation.” I offer this book as a springboard to both.

To succeed in today's media environment, “political leaders must appear as accessible, authentic, and relatable,” she argues,