Counter Measures

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So What, You Twit?

WORDmeister’s Note: We continue this week’s conversation on the impact and effects of social media—does it matter?—with Malcolm Gladwell’s skeptical discussion in The New Yorker. Earlier this week, NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard told the WORD that we’re in the middle of a revolution. But did Twitter really threaten the government in Moldova in 2009, or in Tehran? Or are social media irrelevant for social movements? The Civil Rights Movement would not have been Tweeted, Gladwell argues.

“The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo. If you have the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you. But if you think there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause.”

—Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker,
“Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted,” Oct. 4, 2010

Editor’s Note: I twit, you twit, we all twit...

PeezPix: Rogue River Bridge

HELP WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring—a search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR: https://jobs.usu.edu/applicants/jsp/shared/frameset/Frameset.jsp?time=1286546342053 or email ted.pease@usu.edu

NPR OMBUDSMAN Alicia C. Shepard talks about journalism. See The Hard News Cafe and her interview with Lee Austin on Utah Public Radio.

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