Dear Colleagues, I am pleased to be chairing the Awards Committee of the ICA Communication and Technology (CAT) Division and would like to draw your attention to the call for nominations for two awards: (1) the Frederick Williams Prize for Contribution to the Study of Communication and Technology and the (2) Herbert S. Dordick Dissertation … Continue reading Call for Nominations for ICT Communication & Technology Awards
General Interest
Democratic Institutions are Messy: Just Ask the US House of Representatives
Protect the rules of democratic institutions
Causality Journalism: Can Academics Help?
As a social scientist, I spend much of my working life sorting out spurious claims about cause and effect. In any social science, particularly when it is impossible to adequately control many variables such as through an experimental design, the analysis and attribution of causality is inherently problematic. Too often, that is not the case … Continue reading Causality Journalism: Can Academics Help?
Should Elites Get Off Twitter?
Should Elitists Get Off Twitter? An opinion piece in the Financial Times by Janan Ganesh (2022) argued that the real reason to get off Twitter was that it “reeks of low status”. Stay on it long enough and you can “catch” its tone of “domestic mediocrity”. Even elites who use this micro-blogging site should beware … Continue reading Should Elites Get Off Twitter?
Working from Home and Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity Problems: Before, During, and Post-Pandemic William H. Dutton and Patricia Esteve-Gonzalez Global Cybersecurity Capacity Centre (GCSCC), Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford Has the shift in working patterns in response to the pandemic caused more problems with cybersecurity? Along with colleagues at the GCSCC, we interviewed a set of experts on cybersecurity to get … Continue reading Working from Home and Cybersecurity
Levelling Up the UK with Information
The UK government has committed to a strategy for levelling up economic activity across the UK.[1] While I am not a geographer or an economist, one need not be to see ways forward on this strategy. The Internet has been seen as a force that might reconfigure the geography of work – what jobs go … Continue reading Levelling Up the UK with Information
The War in Ukraine and Climate Change
The G20 Bali Summit held 15–16 November 2022 has been called the “first global summit of the second cold war” (Foy and Ruehl 2022). It was the seventeenth meeting of Group of Twenty (G20), which was held in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia. The reviews of this meeting suggest that it was a breakthrough in international … Continue reading The War in Ukraine and Climate Change
Twitter @Freedom of Expression
Twitter debates might put freedom of expression back on the agenda
Bad Prince Putin
Niccolo Machiavelli was not only one of the ancestorial-fathers of political science, but also remains incredibly relevant and insightful on so many topics of politics and power. In his discourses, advising the prince, he talks about a ‘bad prince’ in his reflections on republics, or popular governments, versus those governed by princes, who are hereditary … Continue reading Bad Prince Putin
Cybersecurity Problems?
Cybersecurity Problems Before, During, and Post-Pandemic William H. Dutton, Patricia Esteve-Gonzalez, and Ioannis Agrafiotis We interviewed a set of experts on cybersecurity to get a tentative idea on whether the pandemic and its effect on working from home (WFH) caused more cybersecurity problems. The interviews led us to entertain the idea that cybersecurity advances over … Continue reading Cybersecurity Problems?