No internet, no Capitol riot: It’s that simple. Mainstream American political organizations assemble crowds, but rarely mobs. Advocacy groups don’t generally turn people against the institutions of government physically, and events like...
Now that Twitter has banned its loudest voice, has the platform lost its status as a political tool? Not really, at least in the short run, I argue in my latest column for Campaigns & Elections. For one thing, DJT wasn’t the only one...
The White House changed hands on January 20th, and so did all of social-media properties associated with it. As Laurence Dobbs covered in the UK’s Daily Telegraph around the time of the inauguration, this process was unusually fraught when one...
So now we know what it takes for Facebook and Twitter to cut off Trump: an angry mob storming the United States Capitol. Before today, these companies had overlooked a lot. Consistent racism? Sad, but he’s a public figure. Lies and...
After Joe Biden nailed down the Democratic presidential nomination almost a year ago, many worried that Donald Trump’s online disinformation machine would make short work of him. As the election season built toward the fall and Trump’s...
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dropped a bomb on U.S. political advertisers today: no new ads related to candidates or issues will run on Facebook or Instagram in the week before Election Day this year. The decision comes as the company tries to deal...
Top photo: George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis. By via Wikipedia. Despite a pandemic, Americans gathered in vast numbers over the past few weeks to protest the deaths of George Floyd and other people of color at the hands of police. Without social...
Facebook just announced that it will start allowing users to opt out of political advertising, though it hasn’t yet said when or how. Will this decision cripple digital campaigning in a presidential election year? First question: how many...
As Americans struggle with a pandemic that’s put millions out of work and killed more than 100,000 of us so far, President Donald Trump has chosen to launch a war against a social-media company. Of course, we already know who’ll lose...
Top photo: a good mask will scare the coronavirus away, or so I hear As America shuts down public events, limits handshakes and learns to practice “social distancing”, how can political campaigns and advocacy organizations adapt to the...