Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (Oxford): Social Media and Bullshit. Alberto Romele (Porto) and Camilla Emmenegger, Francesco Gallino, and Daniele Gorgone (Turin): Technologies of Voluntary Servitude: A Post-Foucauldian Perspective on Social Media. Robert W. Gehl (Utah): Building a Better Twitter: A Study of the Twitter Alternatives GNU Social, Quitter, rstat.us, and Twister. Donovan Ramsey on the truth about black Twitter: Complex, influential, and far more meaningful than the sum of its social justice-driven hashtags. Alex Hern and Helena Bengtsson on Reddit: Can anyone clean up the mess behind “the front page of the internet”? A study of Reddit comments reveals the best and worst communities. Kaleigh Rogers on how someone quantified which subreddits are the most toxic. Reddit wants to exile trolls — but growing up is hard. Ijeoma Oluo on how taking down bigots with their own weapons is sweet, satisfying — and very, very wrong. Eric Steuer on the rise and fall of RedBook, the site that sex workers couldn’t live without. Pinterest is finally going to let us buy the things we like. Rob Horning on Pinterest and the acquisitive gaze. How do you edit a giant crowd-sourced encyclopedia? With volunteers — and lots of fighting. Jessamyn West on how to (try to) lie with Wikipedia: The manufactured history of neckbeard-shaming. As vertical marketplaces rise, Craigslist faces its demise. Ryan Holiday interviews Scott DeLong on the superficiality behind Viral Nova. Social-media researchers have more than enough material for their research — and that's getting to be a problem; Scott McLemee makes some inquiries.
