Chris B

Hiii BlueSky, coming soon (February 2025):

Rural Education & Queer Identities: Rural and (Out) Rooted. This edited collection, of over 40 chapters, embraces creative narratives and empirical research. Check out the table of contents! 💛🌱🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

www.routledge.com/Rural-Educat...

Important point

He also conflates masculinity with aggressiveness, which is bullshit

Nothing More of This Land From award-winning journalist Joseph Lee, an exploration of Indigenous identity that builds on the author’s experiences and questions as an Aquinna...

To learn more about the Wampanoag story & the complexity of Indigenous identity, I hope you'll consider pre-ordering my book. It explores big questions about land & community, from Martha’s Vineyard to Indigenous lands around the world 🌊
www.simonandschuster.com/books/Nothin...

Excited to present my ongoing research agenda on selective (il)liberalism this Wednesday at 1 PM, hosted by @bupolisci.bsky.social. The talk features collaborations with @turnbulldugarte.bsky.social, @laiabalcells.bsky.social & Ethan vanderWilden.

If in Boston/BU area, happy to engage!

This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series The Feed There is a war happening. We are immersed in an evolving, ongoing conflict: an Information World War in which state actors, terrorists, and ideological extremists leverage the social infrastructure underpinning everyday life to sow discord and erode shared reality. The conflict is still being processed as a series of individual skirmishes - a collection of disparate, localized, truth-in-narrative problems - but these battles are connected. The campaigns are often perceived as organic online chaos driven by emergent, bottom-up amateur actions when a substantial amount is, in fact, helped along or instigated by systematic, top-down institutional and state actions. This is a kind of warm war; not the active, declared, open conflict of a hot war, but beyond the shadowboxing of a cold one.

The Information World War has already been going on for several years. We called the opening skirmishes "media manipulation" and "hoaxes", assuming that we were dealing with ideological pranksters doing it for the lulz (and that lulz were harmless). In reality, the combatants are professional, state-employed cyberwarriors and seasoned amateur guerrillas pursuing very well-defined objectives with military precision and specialized tools. Each type of combatant brings a different mental model to the conflict, but uses the same set of tools. There are state-sponsored trolls, destabilizing societies in some countries, and rendering all information channels except state media useless in others. They operate at the behest of rulers, often through military or intelligence divisions. Sometimes, as in the case of Duterte in the Philippines, these digital armies focus on interference in their own elections, using paid botnets and teams of sockpuppet personas to troll and harass opponents, or to amplify their owner's candidacy. Other times, the trolls reach beyond their borders to manipulate politics elsewhere, as 1 A TTA

Algorithmic distribution systems will always be co-opted by the best resourced or most technologically capable combatants. Soon, better Al will rewrite the playbook yet again - perhaps the digital equivalent of Blitzkrieg in its potential for capturing new territory. Al-generated audio and video deepfakes will erode trust in what we see with our own eyes, leaving us vulnerable both to faked content and to the discrediting of the actual truth by insinuation. Authenticity debates will commandeer media cycles, pushing us into an infinite loop of perpetually investigating basic facts. Chronic skepticism and the cognitive DDoS will increase polarization, leading to a consolidation of trust in distinct sets of right and left-wing authority figures - thought oligarchs speaking to entirely separate groups. We know this is coming, and yet we're doing very little to get ahead of it. No one is responsible for getting ahead of it. Tha Lar nunhlam ic thic. nlatfaume anon'+

If the warm war is allowed to continue as it has, there is a very real threat of descent into illegitimate leadership and fractured, paralyzed societies. If algorithmic amplification continues to privilege the propagandists most effective at gaming the system, if combatant persona accounts continue to harass civilian voices off of platforms, and if hostile state intelligence services remain able to recruit millions of Americans into fake "communities", the norms that have traditionally protected democratic societies will fail. We don't have time to waste on digital security theater. In the two years since Election 2016, we've all come to agree that something is wrong on the internet. There is momentum and energy to do something, but the complexity of the problem and the fact that it intersects with other thorny issues of internet governance (privacy, monopoly, expression, among others) means that we're stuck in a state of paralysis, unable to address disinformation in a meaningful way. Instead, both regulators and the platforms throw up low-level roadblocks. This is what a digital Maginot line looks like.

5 years ago yesterday I wrote an essay arguing that institutions were thinking about online media, insurgencies, & manipulation campaigns all wrong. Fighting the last war.

The Digital Maginot line, I called it. It went viral then.

Here it is on its anniversary. www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/11/28/t...

Emboldened by Trump, Christian nationalists ramp up war on public education MAGA leaders promise an "educational insurgency" to create "boot camps for winning back America"

The new Texas curriculum "includes lessons on the Sermon on the Mount and the 'prodigal son' Bible story and explicitly teaches that 'Jesus rose from the dead,' treating the myth of the resurrection as historical fact."

www.salon.com/2024/11/26/o...

Florida Tries a Subtler Way to Curb Progressive Ideology: Cut Sociology Conservatives in Florida have moved from explosive politics to subtler tactics to uproot liberal “indoctrination” in higher education by removing subjects like sociology from core requirements.

#Sociology faces resistance in authoritarian regimes because it exposes oppression. It unravels systemic injustices and disrupts the narratives of those in power.

More than just a discipline, #Sociology is a form of resistance and that’s exactly why they fear it.
www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/u...

This week on the @contextsmag.bsky.social blog, Roman Williams discusses how he’s combining sociology + photography to bridge religious divides. 📷

Find our conversation about Roman’s new book, #SacredSnaps, and his commitment to doing sociology *with* the public ➡️ contexts.org/blog/roman-w...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

New study finds that people rate everyday items such as chocolate bars & clothing more negatively when they find out people in their opposing political group rate them more positively. journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Opinion | ‘We Tire Very Quickly of Being Told That Everything Is on Fire’ (Gift Article) Why invoking a public health crisis too often can lead society astray.

🧵Mini-essay for your Sunday!

What should we label a public health crisis, & what happens when we do?

I don't agree w/ every point this thought-provoking NYT op-ed makes. But it calls out some valid concerns, so here's a deconstruction, w/ some commentary of my...

www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/o...

Hey folks! So in light of the new followers (love you all <3) and the fact many of you likely followed me because I study extremism and the far-right, let's do a book thread! These are some of the best books for building an understanding of the far-right. Also most are available as audiobooks!

🧵
1/

So good!!

Where can a person with graduate degrees in data science, analysis, and survey methods help to make social change?

Suggestions, advice, and leads please

Georgia Dismissed All Members of Maternal Mortality Committee After ProPublica Obtained Internal Details of Two Deaths In a letter, the state’s public health commissioner said the action was taken because “confidential information provided to the Maternal Mortality Review Committee was inappropriately shared with outs...

I know everyone is talking about Matt Gaetz but please don't miss this:

Georgia fired every single person on its maternal mortality review committee. Why? They didn't like that reporters found out that the state's ban killed two women www.propublica.org/article/geor...

key findings screenshot of TechTonic Justice's Inescapable AI report

key findings screenshot of TechTonic Justice's Inescapable AI report

key findings screenshot of TechTonic Justice's Inescapable AI report

AI dictates *every* aspect of low-income people's lives.

A must-read report by @kevindeliban.bsky.social of @techtonicjustice.bsky.social on how intrusive AI has become, and the urgency to change course. AI is not inevitable. This can be undone.

www.techtonicjustice.org/reports/ines...

and none of those pieces are being written by people who understand how that level of constant abuse CHANGES you

it’s not a mere tedious cleanup process, blocking today’s round of trolls just like sorting out the junk mail from the bills and birthday cards

it does not live on you that lightly

had to go to live tv for a full view of field if that’s an option

Only starcam view on paramount+ / my son just switched us to live tv for full match

The only view for the NWSL championship on Paramount+ being the “Star Cam” that is only following Trinity Rodman and not the ACTUAL PLAY is not a possible way to watch soccer. Whose idea was this?

Border Militias Prepare to Assist With Donald Trump’s Mass Deportation Plans Militias that patrol the US border with Mexico are thrilled that Donald Trump has been elected—and plan to be a “valuable resource” to the incoming administration, whether or not they’re asked.

"Border militias" have been preparing for this for decades-the Klan ran border patrols in the 1970s, mercenaries in the 1980s, Minutemen in the 200s. They have been violent, extralegal actors and illegal private armies most of that time www.wired.com/story/border...

Segregation Academies in Mississippi Are Benefiting From Public Dollars, as They Did in the 1960s ProPublica identified 20 schools in the state that likely opened as segregation academies and have received almost $10 million over the past six years from the state’s tax credit donation program.

"These days, people often 'have no idea why these segregation academies opened...It was one of the most aggressive moves that Southern governors took after the passage of the Brown case. That movement accelerated as the Civil Rights movement accelerated.'”
www.propublica.org/article/miss...

My book “The Normalization of the Radical Right” has recently come out in the US.

If you're interested, in this thread I’ll link different ways of learning about the book and its argument (I’ll keep adding if more come out).

First, here is the link to the book: academic.oup.com/book/57946

If you’re ever surprised by how clueless we, as a people, appear to be sometimes, just remember that a scant 25 years ago The Blair Witch project came out and 90% of the population was like “holy shit is this REAL?!”

Comic by @krishraghav.bsky.social "Bazaars in Central Asia and the Caucasus." Working with Susanne Fehlings and Hasan Karrar, a 16-page comic reflecting on post-soviet bazaars in Central Asia as a witness to historic change and as a site of resilience & community. www.academia.edu/125080867/Co...

As fast fashion's waste pollutes Africa's environment, designers in Ghana are finding a solution In a sprawling secondhand clothing market in Ghana’s capital, early morning shoppers jostle as they search through piles of garments, eager to pluck a bargain or a designer find from the stalls sellin...

“Fast fashion has taken over as the dominant mode of production...[Fishing] nets often capture textile waste from the sea. Unsold used clothes “aren’t even burned but are thrown into the Korle Lagoon, which then goes into the sea,” Abbey said. #Ghana #Waste #FastFashion apnews.com/article/ghan...

don _hertzfeldt Not to sound like a curmudgeon, but when I was a teenager, I took the train to go to the record store to find rare stuff. Spotify is way more convenient, but that wasn't the point. The point was to get out and to feel like you're hunting, to feel like you're living your life. I'm going to the movies, I'm going to this show. What streaming has done-it's very convenient, but it's taken the feeling of going hunting and turned it into we're all just being fed. We're all farm animals that are just being fed, and we're being fed content. You can just stay home. Just stay home. We'll just feed it to you. No wonder everyone's depressed.

This hit my weak point for massive damage