Archive: Author: Micah Sifry

Photo by Sophie Franchi of a section of a large chalk mural by Joseph White for A Walk in the Park Cafe in historic Firestone Park.A few weeks ago, I got together with Chris Horne, the founder and publisher of The Devil Strip, a local culture and arts magazine serving the city of Akron, Ohio, for a conversation about the potential of news cooperatives like his to revive and strengthen local civic life. As we have become a “disinformation society” where tens of millions of Americans are highly susceptible to false news, conspiracies, junk information and spectacle, I’ve grown more convinced that quality news has to be supported and valued as a form of public infrastructure. The same way we...

In January 2017, in the middle of a blizzard, 50 people crammed into a Yonkers, NY living-room to launch NYCD16-Indivisible, one of thousands of similar groups born at the same moment across the US.On Saturday, December 12th, as part of the annual RootsCamp conference, I had the pleasure of convening a conversation about movement organizing in the Trump years focused on the experience of Indivisible, one of the biggest examples of grassroots Democratic activism that arose after the 2016 election, and one where the potential and challenges of building a national, decentralized movement with vibrant chapters in blue, purple and red districts have played out in vivid and important ways. What follows is the edited transcript of our hour-long panel discussion — an...

Photo by Glen Carrie on UnsplashThree out of four Americans visit Facebook at least once a day, according to Pew Research. Two-thirds visit Instagram at least once a day. Half visit Youtube. This is not because we are addicted to social media, a claim that is thrown around too lightly. As journalist Maia Szalavitz points out, addiction is a compulsive behavior like drug use that continues despite harm. Dependence is when we need a drug to function. We are dependent on these social media platforms because so much of our personal and public lives are conducted through them.While the lion’s share of attention to how platforms affect our lives goes to Big Questions like, “Should Donald Trump be allowed to come...

Last Tuesday night, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on the live-videogaming site Twitch to play “Among Us” and encourage watchers to vote. At one point, 435,000 Twitch users were watching her live, and the video of her playing against fellow Rep. Ilhan Omar along with several Twitch VIPs, had more than 4.5 million views as of late Wednesday. To put those numbers in context, ranked against regular Twitch celebrities, AOC would be in the top twenty for peak views.Polygon, a Vox Media site that covers online gaming, called Ocasio-Cortez’s stunt “the future of politics.” “This is what is possible when a modern, tech-savvy politician attracts not just supporters, but fandom,” Polygon senior editor Patricia Hernandez wrote. Unlike old-fashioned cults of personality,...

If President Trump declares himself the winner of the 2020 election before the votes are all counted, we are heading for deep trouble. According to a recent poll done by Data for Progress and the Justice Collaborative Institute, 77% of likely Republican voters say they would trust Trump’s word if he did so (46% “a lot”; 31% “a little”). Similarly, 70% said they would trust Fox News (36% “a lot”; 34% “a little) if it made that call. No other major media outlets exhibit the same level of trust from likely Republican voters.While an optimist could read this survey the opposite way — only 46% of likely Republican voters said they trusted Trump’s word “a lot” — it should be clear that history hinges...

If past history is any guide, Senator Kamala Harris is going to be Joe Biden’s pick as his vice presidential running mate. And by past history, I mean, how often her Wikipedia page has been edited in the last SIX weeks.Um, but if you only look at the last three weeks of edits, it’s going to be former Obama national security advisor Susan Rice.Or, if you want to assume only the latest edits are the tell-tale signs, the winner of the VP sweepstakes might be Sen. Tammy Duckworth.Yes, it’s time for the quadrennial guessing game known as “Who will be VP?” and this year, while most of the rituals of the presidential nominating process have been demolished by the pandemic,...