Technology Firms Shape Political Communication: The Work of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google With Campaigns During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Cycle

NBC, WSJ  Poll: “A new poll conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal shows that 48 percent of currently employed women in the United States say that they have personally experienced an unwelcome sexual advance or verbal or physical harassment at work. The results — which come after allegations of sexual misconduct against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein opened a floodgate of complaints against other high-profile men in a variety of industries — show that a broad majority of Americans believe workplace sexual harassment is commonplace. And significant shares of men and women say that the recent spate of stories about misconduct have affected how they think about gender, behavior in the workplace and their willingness to speak out about mistreatment.




Technology Firms Shape Political Communication: The Work of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google With Campaigns During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Cycle. Daniel Kreiss & SHANNON C. MCGREGOR. Journal of Political Communication. Pages 1-23 | Published online: 26 Oct 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2017.1364814.
“This article offers the first analysis of the role that technology companies, specifically Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Google, play in shaping the political communication of electoral campaigns in the United States. We offer an empirical analysis of the work technology firms do around electoral politics through interviews with staffers at these firms and digital and social media directors of 2016 U.S. presidential primary and general election campaigns, in addition to field observations at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. We find that technology firms are motivated to work in the political space for marketing, advertising revenue, and relationship-building in the service of lobbying efforts. To facilitate this, these firms have developed organizational structures and staffing patterns that accord with the partisan nature of American politics. Furthermore, Facebook, Twitter, and Google go beyond promoting their services and facilitating digital advertising buys, actively shaping campaign communication through their close collaboration with political staffers. We show how representatives at these firms serve as quasi-digital consultants to campaigns, shaping digital strategy, content, and execution. Given this, we argue that political communication scholars need to consider social media firms as more active agents in political processes than previously appreciated in the literature.”



   

200 dead in tunnel accident at North Korea nuclear test site: report

“The National Archives today released 2,891 records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy that are subject to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Actof 1992 (JFK Act). These records are available for download online. The President has also ordered that all remaining records governed by section 5 of the JFK Act be released, and thus additional records will be released subject to redactions recommended by the executive offices and agencies.  NARA will process these records for release as soon as possible on a rolling basis. Based on requests from executive offices and agencies the President has allowed the temporary withholding of certain information that would harm national security, law enforcement, or foreign affairs.  The President also ordered agencies to re-review their proposed redactions and only redact information in the rarest of circumstances where its withholding “is made necessary by an identifiable harm to military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations; and the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”  These instructions will allow the National Archives to release as much information as possible by the end of the temporary certification period on April 26, 2018. The National Archives previously released 3,810 related records on July 24, 2017, including 441 records previously withheld in their entirety and 3,369 records previously withheld in part. More information about this release is available online. In addition, the National Archives is also releasing to the public the unclassified electronic records of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), including 52,387 emails and 16,627 files from the ARRB drives. The National Archives established the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection in November 1992, and it consists of approximately five million pages of records. The vast majority of the collection has been publicly available without any restrictions since the late 1990s.”

Robert Mueller is just getting started.
Legal experts said the court filings indicate Mueller is running a serious, deliberative, and far-sighted inquiry. “I would say this is High-Level Special Counsel Investigation 101,” said Richard Ben-Veniste, a member of the Watergate special-prosecutor task force. (The Atlantic)

America Has a Monopoly Problem—and It's Huge

Trump Drags the Fed Down Into the Political Mud

If You Look Behind Neoliberal Economists, You’ll Discover the Rich: How Economic Theories Serve Big Business

The road to serfdom – sponsored by big business

How Michael Clayton Presaged 2017

Ten years after the film’s release, the world has caught up to its bleak vision.