Local Digital Social Networks
“This highlights that while Mead and Nelson were right to believe democracy depends on the pluralism that social media has encouraged, current platforms have missed that it also depends on communities achieving coherence and common understanding that empower effective social action, the formation of cultures of belonging, etc.” - Weil & Tang
Digital intermediation could help offer this kind of access to what Zacka calls “the lively and diverse intermingling of strangers in the public arena” and what the urban planner Jane Jacobs described as the “great and exuberant richness of differences and possibilities, many of these unique and unpredictable—and all the more valuable because they... See more
Alex Pentland • Rediscovering the Pleasures of Pluralism: The Potential of Digitally Mediated Civic Participation — Digitalist Papers
close, but not too close; “unpredictable - and the more valuable because they are”
Bristol Cable launches hybrid news and social networking app in bid to double membership
journalism.co.uk
Infrastructure can be defined as "the stuff you don't notice until it breaks." The key property of infrastructure is that it can be easily and reliably used by anyone for their own purposes. It makes our lives easier and us more productive. It can be deployed and used by many for many purposes at about the same cost as one. The more people who use... See more
Just a moment...
Note that I’m casting the goal in terms of the number of local reporters, not the number of local news outlets, hours of coverage or number of articles. We shouldn’t care about “saving newspapers,” or any particular delivery system. New models of news distribution will continue to be invented — along with compelling new storytelling techniques —... See more
Steven Waldman • How high school sports coverage can save democracy - Poynter
Many such experiments, both historical and contemporary, get this balance not just wrong, but wildly wrong. They make the mistake of being about missions first, and placemaking second. That’s a suitable approach for a conference, corporation, religion, or a political movement, but not for a place qua place. Even a virtual place that exists only as... See more
Brown and Jaźwińska posit that there are some counterforces in the publisher toolkit, including owned-and-operated platforms and cultivating more direct relationships with audiences.
Bringing this all together, the technologies through which we see the public shape how we understand it , making it more likely that we end up in the one situation rather than the other. As you have surely guessed by now, I believe Twitter/X, Facebook, and other social media services are just such technologies for shaping publics. Many of the... See more