Local Digital Social Networks

It’s possible to provide these services and argue – as the Panthers did – that these services are an alternative to unfair government services. It’s also possible to argue, as Occupy has sometimes done, that these services are an example of what we want governments to provide and a way of pressuring government to do the right thing. This second... See more

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

Global mega-platforms under capitalism are structurally incapable of handling the business of civilization: of governance, of providing genuinely public infrastructure, of making knife-edge decisions about the balance of liberties and securities. It’s not what they do or what they want to do, and in many cases it’s in opposition to their actual... See more

civic renewal will hinge in the end on whether a critical mass of citizens come to recognize that they can best serve their own interests by associating with others to realize shared goals.

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.