The UK’s first TikTok PM? Andy Burnham channels Zohran Mamdani as he hits social media

The UK’s first TikTok PM? Andy Burnham channels Zohran Mamdani as he hits social media

From Mo Farah to Bus Aunty, new prime minister makes good on promise to ‘do things differently’ when it comes to communication

theguardian.com

BBC can now subpoena Trump’s closest advisers and investigate the more than 400 companies owned by Trump’s family trust. trib.al/oVqwpnL

Blog Post: Speaking at the University of Luxembourg next week www.andrewchadwick.com/blog/2026/5/...

Speaking at the University of Luxembourg next week — Andrew Chadwick

I'm excited to be heading to the University of Luxembourg next week to give the closing keynote at the DiGiTRAD Critical Media Studies Lecture Series at the university's Culture & Computation Lab.

andrewchadwick.com

Back to the future. Exactly ten years and ten days ago: journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Digital Media, Power, and Democracy in Parties and Election Campaigns - Andrew Chadwick, Jennifer Stromer-Galley, 2016

The role of digital media practices in reshaping political parties and election campaigns is driven by a tension between control and interactivity, but the over...

journals.sagepub.com

‘Nothing good can happen democratically if people have nothing to leave their homes for, and no places to meet when they do. Covid and its aftermath have dramatically worsened this problem.’ @will-davies.bsky.social on hyperpolitics. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

William Davies · Easy to Join, Easy to Leave: Politics on Speed

This is what distinguishes hyperpolitics from the mass democracy of the mid-20th century. Symbolic political gestures...

lrb.co.uk

Ever wondered what's really going on with this particular genus of the pseudo event? Had an interesting and lively interview with @estheraddley.bsky.social for her piece. Always love this kind of analysis. Funny AND serious. Lots of examples. Takes a good journalist to convey it in this way.

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 3mo ago

Walking the dog and braving the paps: the art of the doorstep photo, from Keane to Mandelson

It's worse than this. Too often we see news reports from the big news orgs that sanitize Trump's rants and digressions either by ignoring them entirely in the write-up or by retrospectively making his remarks seem more coherent than they in fact were.

Jay Rosen@jayrosen.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Rare to see discusson of the point @jamellebouie.net makes here. "Most coverage of Trump treats him as president in a functional way, even if he doesn’t perform the civic duties of the office." www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/o... Rather than designing coverage for a cateory of one — the mad king...1/

I helped @victorrlopz.bsky.social with this report (for a Spanish readership) on the UK Greens' online strategy, which is proving effective.

Diario Público@publico.es · 6mo ago

❓Qué puede aprender la izquierda (también en España) del viral spot del Partido Verde de Reino Unido ✍️ Por @victorrlopz.bsky.social

A bunch of trolls mocked a mildly cringe anti-radicalization video game, and Britain’s right-wing press joined in. But why did they all ignore the *actual* far-right extremists pushing Amelia memes? thedayofreckoning.substack.com/p/amelia-the...

Amelia: The far-right’s new waifu thirst trap mascot

Alt-right types mock a cringey online game and deny they're extremists... while posting racist memes exhorting men to do violence

thedayofreckoning.substack.com

Domino is proud to amplify the launch of War Child Records in announcing the release of HELP(2); a brand new collaborative album including new music from: Arctic Monkeys wet leg Beth Gibbons Anna Calvi and more warchildrecs.ffm.to/help2

It's worse than this. Too often we see news reports from the big news orgs that sanitize Trump's rants and digressions either by ignoring them entirely in the write-up or by retrospectively making his remarks seem more coherent than they in fact were.

Jay Rosen@jayrosen.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Rare to see discusson of the point @jamellebouie.net makes here. "Most coverage of Trump treats him as president in a functional way, even if he doesn’t perform the civic duties of the office." www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/o... Rather than designing coverage for a cateory of one — the mad king...1/

Who is the Big Tobacco of today? In new work, we find 50% of high profile social media papers are connected to big tech through funding, collaboration and employment. Most connections aren't disclosed. @jbakcoleman.bsky.social @jevinwest.bsky.social @carlbergstrom.com 1 arxiv.org/abs/2601.11507

Industry Influence in High-Profile Social Media Research

To what extent is social media research independent from industry influence? Leveraging openly available data, we show that half of the research published in top journals has disclosable ties to indus...

arxiv.org

Re-upping this from six months ago, due to the recent context shift. Will the discourse of the "social media ban" for under-16s now marginalize the greater need to embed media literacy and carefully implement regulation of the online information environment in advance of franchise reform? Hope not.

Andrew Chadwick@andrewchadwick.com · last yr.

A great initiative, a long time coming. I hope the framework that evolves is more holistic and includes digital media literacy and hard thinking about the impact of today's information environment on our new young citizens. That one paragraph (19) is doing heavy lifting! www.gov.uk/government/p...

Acting against X and Musk looks like the biggest open goal for Keir Starmer it's possible to imagine

"X has a clear legal responsibility to act quickly to respond to user complaints and remove illegal content from its platform," says Prof @andrewchadwick.com to the @bigissue.com Read the full article... bit.ly/4qe6PxT

What would happen if the UK government actually banned Grok and X?

Keir Starmer's government has hinted a UK ban on X isn't out of the question. Experts tell us what a ban would look like in reality.

bit.ly

I was happy to help @gregbarradale.bsky.social at the @bigissue.com with his explainer report on how the UK regulatory regime applies to X's Grok AI. www.bigissue.com/news/social-...

What would happen if the UK government actually banned Grok and X?

Keir Starmer's government has hinted a UK ban on X isn't out of the question. Experts tell us what a ban would look like in reality.

bigissue.com

🚨NEW PAPER The Logic of Connective Faction: How Digitally Networked Elites and Hyper-Partisan Media Radicalize Politics w/ @yunkangyang.bsky.social & @mikecowburn.bsky.social Online radicalization doesn't just affect the public. It also reshapes how elites & parties behave. doi.org/10.1080/1058...

The Logic of Connective Faction: How Digitally Networked Elites and Hyper-Partisan Media Radicalize Politics

Across democratic systems, ideological cleavages increasingly emerge not only between but also within political parties. At the same time, hyperpartisan and digitally networked media ecosystems amp...

doi.org

Never thought we'd see the US Government ban and deport staff from think tanks and NGOs that campaign to uphold key tenets of liberal democracy. Yet here we are. There are potential further implications for probably tens of thousands of academic researchers around the world. Extraordinarily grim.

New paper! In @icsjournal.bsky.social I argue that governing #AI means “scale work” — the labour of stabilizing AI *across* relationships that are usually tackled in isolation. I use journalism’s GenAI encounters as a case study, connecting siloed AI collisions www.tandfonline.com/eprint/T7WWF...

European Commission issues €120 million fine to Elon Musk's X under the Digital Services Act. "The breaches include the deceptive design of its ‘blue checkmark', the lack of transparency of its advertising repository, and the failure to provide access to public data for researchers."

Commission fines X €120 million under the Digital Services Act

Today, the Commission has issued a fine of €120 million to X for breaching its transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA).

ec.europa.eu

Dame Sara Khan, former govt adviser on social cohesion, responds to my story and also calls on the government to leave X 👇

Dame Sara Khan DBE@sarakhandbe.bsky.social · 9mo ago

I left Twitter in 2015 ten years ago because of the scale of threats, abuse, cyber-stalking I received & the real world impact it had on me personally & professionally. Under Musk X is worse. He is a foreign hostile actor, interferes in our democracy, incites violence. Gov should be bold & abandon X

Much will be said about the British Broadcasting Corporation over the coming days and weeks. But let’s consider for a moment the broader role it and similar public service media organizations play in the increasingly dysfunctional media systems we see around the world.

I spoke to Christian Saathoff of ARD's Tagesschau for his feature report about the online disinformation and misinformation swirling around the issue of immigration and asylum in the UK. www.tagesschau.de/faktenfinder...

Großbritannien: Falschbehauptungen befeuern Proteste gegen Asylpolitik

In Großbritannien wird die Debatte über die Unterbringung Geflüchteter durch Falschinformationen befeuert. Klar ist, dass die Kosten für die Unterbringung massiv steigen werden. Von Christian Saathoff...

tagesschau.de

Excited to share that, with @cat-tebaldi.bsky.social , we’ve published a new article in New Media & Society! We examine how far-right actors on X (formerly Twitter) instrumentalize wellness culture to spread reactionary ideology. Thread below 🧵

The wellness pipeline: Tracing far-right health narratives on X - Piotr Marczyński, Catherine Tebaldi, 2025

This article examines how far-right groups advance political agendas through digital platforms, specifically by embedding reactionary ideology within health and...

doi.org

I have to say... I hope that so-called "AI-powered" browsers really do develop into something genuinely agentic and therefore useful for everyday work and leisure. But having watched the OpenAI Atlas demo video, it's starting to feel like...

The latest illustration of a key point often forgotten by the platforms: experiences of AI will never be universal or monolithic and will always be shaped by social inequalities and preexisting vulnerabilities of many different kinds www.wsj.com/tech/ai/teen...

Teen Sues Maker of Fake-Nude Software

There is a growing concern over AI sites that generate fabricated naked photos of minors and nonconsenting adults.

wsj.com

Really important read. Shame is a powerful social emotion—it is the negative feeling one has upon perceiving that others will think poorly of them for failing to adhere to a norm. newrepublic.com/article/2015...

I am very honoured to be awarded the Simon Fraser University's Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy On behalf of all of my colleagues @citizenlab.ca and our partners around the world thank you for this recognition of our work youtu.be/41wkXFyEsP8?...

2025 SFU Sterling Prize recipient Ronald J. Deibert protects privacy in the age of cyber espionage

YouTube video by Simon Fraser University

youtu.be

NEW: Last month Trump and RFK Jr announced the FDA was was recommending a new drug to treat autism — leucovorin But they failed to provide any more information. So parents flocked to a Facebook group, that quickly filled with chaos, confusion and conspiracies www.wired.com/story/chaos-...

Chaos, Confusion, and Conspiracies: Inside a Facebook Group for RFK Jr’s Autism ‘Cure’

A Facebook group set up to share information about leucovorin has been spammed by affiliate links and supplement companies trying to shame parents of autistic kids.

wired.com