Back at the beginning of the semester I warned readers of this blog that I was teaching a course called Lying About the Past in which the students would — after studying historical hoaxes for half a semester — create a historical hoax and turn it loose on the Internet. They did just that and…
Tag: Digital Media
Good-bye, Mr. Chips
After being completely consumed with various and sundry crises completely outside the normal crises that are part of the professor’s job description, I’ve finally begun to catch up on reading various things I had to put aside for later. I’m sorry to say, one of the first things I read was Mark Edmundson’s “Geek Lessons”…
Watching Gustav, Remembering Katrina
Over the weekend the American news media was as focused on Hurricane Gustav as it was on the Republican National Convention. Naturally there were numerous comparisons between the response to Gustav and the non-response to Katrina almost exactly three years ago. These reminders of the disaster that was Katrina have brought lots of people to…
The New Media Conventions
More than any other national political convention before it (and presumably the upcoming Republican National Convention won’t be much different), the just completed Democratic National Convention was the first full on new media convention. The speeches from the podium were broadcast live online with what seemed like some very powerful bandwidth, bloggers were everywhere, clips…