Florian Foos (Zurich), Lyubomir Kostadinov (WWF), Nikolay Marinov (Mannheim), and Frank Schimmelfennig (ETH Zurich): Does Social Media Promote Civic Activism? A Field Experiment with a Civic Campaign. Yannis Theocharis (Mannheim Centre): Does Facebook Increase Political Participation? Evidence from a Field Experiment. Is Facebook luring you into being depressed? Chelsea Wald on how social media encourages us to follow those we envy. Science says Facebook is ruining your life. Annie Lowrey and Abraham Riesman on saying good-bye to all that Twitter. Over the past couple of weeks, a new genre of the “goodbye Twitter” essay has emerged, one that is as baffling as it is annoying. From The Idler, is technology killing conversation? Carlos Lozada on Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, the book that will have everyone talking about how we never talk anymore.
Anil Dash is against “don’t read the comments”: We’ve made a habit out of telling people not to read the comments online — but what started as a cynical in-joke has become a bad habit, and an excuse for enabling abuse across the web. Claude S. Fischer on how smartphones aren’t anti-social. Constant connection: We used to believe technology made us lonely — a whole new body of research says it doesn’t.
