My department is fundraising! If you're an alum, former faculty member, or friend of the Dept. of Media Studies at the University of CO Boulder, we'd be grateful for your support of faculty + students working together to understand—and where needed, change—the world's media & technological systems.

Media Studies at CU Boulder@cumediastudies.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Attention Media Studies Buffs! CMDI Dean Lori Bergen has offered a matching gift challenge! All gifts to the Department of Media Studies will be matched—up to a total match of $5,000—until June 30. Please help our department earn this match. Give today: giving.cu.edu/cmdimediastudies.

…in other news, Columbia Sportswear is suing Columbia University over use of the name “Columbia” on apparel… Source: OregonLive.com share.google/2PL7b4gfAsdh...

🚨🚨CALL FOR PAPERS🚨🚨Fancy contributing to a special issue on Cultural Materialism, Fascism and the Far Right, edited by @elinormtaylor.bsky.social? Look no further... Details, including the deadline, at the link: raymondwilliams.co.uk/2026/01/28/c...

Call for Papers: Cultural Materialism, Fascism and the Far Right, A Special Issue of Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism

Speaking in 1980 amid the New Right upsurge, Raymond Williams noted that ‘cultural struggle is absolutely crucial, because this is the terrain on which the interpretation of the crisis had to be es…

raymondwilliams.co.uk

M-W nailed Word of the Year 2025: SLOP.

Merriam-Webster@merriam-webster.com · 9mo ago

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

War is peace. Calibri is helvetica.

A very happy National Dewey Decimal System Day to all who celebrate. (Story in post 2/2.)

Calibri may be more screen readable than Times New Roman, but really, sometimes a font is…just a font.

Ariel Edwards-Levy@aedwardslevy.bsky.social · 10mo ago

"there's a new serif in town"

It’s “Word of the Year” time again. Oxford seems a bit late to the 2025 party with “rage bait”: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/a...

The Oxford 2025 Word of the Year Is ‘Rage Bait’

nytimes.com

Mars was the Roman god of war. That’s why we say ‘martial arts,' ‘martial law,' and 'court martial.' Marshall was the Roman god of designer fashion at discount prices. That’s why we have Marshall’s.

"If reviewers are merely skimming papers & relying on LLMs to generate substantive reviews...it opens the door for a new cheating method...which involves inserting hidden white text... that tells AI tools to give a research paper favorable reviews." www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

AI-Enabled Cheating Points to ‘Untenable’ Peer Review System

It’s not clear how widespread the new cheating strategy is, but it’s highlighting longstanding drivers of the peer review crisis some reviewers are now trying to alleviate with AI.

insidehighered.com

One of the best written essays I've read in awhile. Clever, researched, clear. We all need well cited and insightful voices on wellness these days, especially. Follow 👀

Azadeh Ghafari@aziwankenobi.bsky.social · last yr.

Cold plunges aren’t healing. They’re rebranded psychiatric punishment, sold back to us through influencer marketing and pseudoscience. The latest research says they don’t even work. Read my full deep dive: open.substack.com/pub/azadehjo...

Before and After the Internet. We have just published a review of two recent books on #AlgorithmicCulture and #PlatformCapitalism by @striphas.bsky.social and @synthesiastica.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Before and after the internet - Subjectivity

Subjectivity -

link.springer.com

Rally today at NOAA building in Boulder, Colorado to stand up for federal workers, particularly scientists

*Please share widely (deadline Mar 5):* The Dept of Media Studies at the Univ of CO Boulder is searching for 2 Assistant Teaching Profs. If you're passionate about higher-ed instruction, invested in media literacy, & have a background in global media, apply: jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

The app deadline for the Assistant Teaching Professor opening in my department (Media Studies, U of CO Boulder) is less than 2 weeks away! This is a contracted/renewable, non-tenure-track faculty line. Read on for additional information about the position: jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

PLEASE SHARE: The Dept. of Media Studies at the University of CO Boulder is hiring TWO assistant teaching professors. These are renewable, non-tenure track positions for which we're using a single job ad: lnkd.in/gHXdMqUw Deadline is February 28, 2025.

Solid piece on the thinking behind the Broligarchy: “The broligarchs have a vision for the new Trump term,” via Vox - apple.news/A5jGJAukoSGK...

The broligarchs have a vision for the new Trump term. It’s darker than you think. — Vox

The real reason Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos are supporting Trump. There’s a dominant narrative in the media about why tech billionaires are sucking up to Donald Trump: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and...

apple.news

At some point I would like to ignore Elon Musk. Sadly, that time is not now. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Elon Musk is the ultimate chaos agent | Siva Vaidhyanathan

With one post on X, Musk has the power to shut down the government of the most powerful nation in world history

theguardian.com

This explains it.

The New Yorker@newyorker.com · 2y ago

Today’s Daily Cartoon, by Tyson Cole. #NewYorkerCartoons nyer.cm/pOnEjU4

Public Domain Day is coming soon. Get ready to party like it's 1929! web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicd...

Public Domain Day 2025 | Duke University School of Law

Tweet January 1, 2025 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1929 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1924! By Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle Directors, Duke Center for the Study of the Public D...

web.law.duke.edu

"The combination of Blackness and Twitter represents a paradigm shift from modernity’s materialist “existence in Black” to a Black technoculture afforded by the digital’s capacities for virtuality, simulation, and interactivity." André Brock

ANDRÉ BROCK: The Illumination of Black Twitter

The Illumination of Black Twitter: Charles Mills, Race, and Digital Media Theory ANDRÉ BROCK Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

buff.ly

‘Phonetic’ is not. ‘Abbreviation’ is 12 letters. ‘Thesaurus’ doesn’t have a synonym. Say what you will about English, but it has a sense of humor.

Did y'all see this? The university of WI system is proposing a policy change so that the system would now assert and control copyright over professors' lecture notes, syllabi, articles, & more. VERY concerning: www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

Wisconsin professors worry AI could replace them

Faculty say a proposed policy change could lead to AI-run classes at the Universities of Wisconsin System. University officials say their fears are overblown.

insidehighered.com

Cultural Studies is officially returning to Bluesky—but before we begin sharing details about our final issue of Volume 37, we first wanted to let you know that we also post on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn and wanted to invite you to follow us wherever else you might also be.

It used to happen like this…

Cathy Davidson@cathyndavidson.bsky.social · 2y ago

Here’s an email I sent a friend in 1994 to help them upload a file in Word Perfect. Ah, the good ol days….. lol.

Oxford English Dictionary word of the year: "brain rot." Fitting… corp.oup.com/word-of-the-...

Oxford Word of the Year 2024 - Oxford University Press

Voting has closed and we'll be revealing the official Word of the Year 2024 shortly. Discover more about our shortlist and the past 20 years of Word of the Year.

corp.oup.com

Dictionary [dot] com's word of the year is "demure." What's your pick? www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-th...

Dictionary.com's 2024 Word of the Year is...

Each year, Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year and short-listed nominees capture pivotal moments in language and culture. Find out which word had people searching for it 200 times more than normal on ou...

dictionary.com

A poem for my last day working at the writing center for the semester (by Joseph Fasano)

(1/2) Just learned that the Italian translation of Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet was just published earlier this month by Mimesis. I knew it was in the works but wasn't aware that it was out. Exciting! 🇮🇹 www.mimesisedizioni.it/libro/979122...

La cultura algoritmica prima di Internet - Ted Striphas

La cultura algoritmica prima di Internet analizza in chiave storico-genealogica la condizione di vita umana e sociale caratterizzata dall’intreccio tra computing e cultura.

mimesisedizioni.it

Grateful to @archive.org for downloading climate & environmental data as we re-enter an era of censorship & climate denial: www.cnn.com/2024/11/19/s...

Scientists fear Trump will erase public research, here’s what they are doing | CNN

The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative is working to preserve scientific data and research on public government websites amid fears that topics like climate change and green energy will be r...

cnn.com