One Year Later: September 11 and the Internet

Presents findings from a survey that looks at how the terror attacks affected Americans' views about access to online information, Internet use, and the Web after September 11. Contains scholarly studies built around analysis of hundreds of Web sites

Opening Closed Regimes: What was the Role of Social Media during the Arab Spring?

Social media played a central role in shaping political debates in the Arab Spring. A spike in online revolutionary conversations often preceded major events on the ground. Social media helped spread democratic ideas across international borders.National Science Foundationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117568/1/2011_Howard-Duffy-Freelon-Hussain-Mari-Mazaid_PITPI.pd

Social Software, Groups, and Governance

Formal groups play an important role in the law. Informal groups largely lie outside it. Should the law be more attentive to informal groups? The paper argues that this and related questions are appearing more frequently as a number of computer technologies, which I collect under the heading social software, increase the salience of groups. In turn, that salience raises important questions about both the significance and the benefits of informal groups. The paper suggests that there may be important social benefits associated with informal groups, and that the law should move towards a framework for encouraging and recognizing them. Such a framework may be organized along three dimensions by which groups arise and sustain themselves: regulating places, things, and stories

The Eventualization of Political Thinking: From the Arab Revolutions to the Trump Era

In his article, The Eventualization of Political Thinking: From the Arab Revolutions to the Trump Era , Óscar Barroso maps out some of the most important contemporary philosophies of the Event: those of Rancière, Badiou, Hardt and Negri and Žižek. These philosophies of the event are defined as post-humanist political proposals that entrust emancipation not to the realization of anthropological ideas but to the emergence of difference. Examining the pessimistic interpretation that these authors make of what has happened since the events of 2011, the author questions whether too much trust has been placed in the supposed virtue of difference and, as a response, he proposes a reappropriation of humanism

\u3cem\u3eHappy Days\u3c/em\u3e Sinking Into Immanence: Samuel Beckett and \u3cem\u3eThe Second Sex\u3c/em\u3e

Dysfunctional, fragmented, and restricted bodies are a cornerstone of Samuel Beckett’s stage, a place where characters and actors alike find themselves forced to express the inexpressible, with notoriously diminished resources. Historically, existentialist readings of the Beckett canon have offered an insight into works which seem to raise essential questions regarding what it means to be when normative metanarratives have ceased to govern and “realist” escapism is denied. When it comes to discussions of phenomenological existentialism and its proponents, however, the works of Simone de Beauvoir often seem to be eschewed, or assimilated into those of the more famous Jean-Paul Sartre. This essay argues that if we revisit Beauvoir’s The Second Sex we can gain fresh insight into Beckett’s construction of his female characters (who, like Beauvoir, tend be overlooked), and a new existentialist reading of parts of his oeuvre can begin to emerge. Beauvoir, as well as being a figurehead of feminist theory, was a phenomenologist in her own right, and by using Happy Days as a case study her theories can be applied to Beckett just as readily as those of her male existentialist counterparts. This essay argues that in Happy Days, we are presented with a protagonist, Winnie, who does much to illustrate the limitations placed on the female body, which in this case is enclosed literally within the earth, and figuratively in its own immanence. I propose that Winnie presides “happily” over reduced but familiar circumstances which see her rendered captive not only by the demands of a relentless and punishing text, but also by a “cultural script” that would fix her to the spot. In her attempts to transcend herself as object, Winnie actually makes of herself her own other , and demonstrates what it means, for her, to “become” a woman

Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World

Folklore and the Internet is a pioneering examination of the folkloric qualities of the World Wide Web, e-mail, and related digital media. It shows that folk culture, sustained by a new and evolving vernacular, has been a key, since the Internetýs beginnings, to language, practice, and interaction online. Users of many sorts continue to develop the Internet as a significant medium for generating, transmitting, documenting, and preserving folklore. In a set of new, insightful essays, contributors Trevor J. Blank, Simon J. Bronner, Robert Dobler, Russell Frank, Gregory Hansen, Robert Glenn Howard, Lynne S. McNeill, Elizabeth Tucker, and William Westerman showcase ways the Internet both shapes and is shaped by folklore.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1034/thumbnail.jp

Connecting with and distancing from:Transnational influences in the formation of Buddhist identity and practices in Bangladesh

The contemporary Theravāda form of Buddhism in Bangladesh was in fact introduced in 1856, following a reformation movement led by Sāramedha Mahāthera from the Arakan region of Burma. Following this reformation Bangladeshi Buddhists have connected with other Buddhist majority countries for models of Budddhist texts, religious practice, and education. Since the reformation, it has come to be mistakenly assumed that Bangladeshi Buddhists uniformly follow Theravāda Buddhism. In this paper, I clarify this misconception by pointing out that other forms of Buddhism are also practiced in Bangladesh. More specifically, the introduction of Mahāyana Buddhism through philanthropic organizations like Japan's Rissho-Kōshei Kai also expand the transnational influences that shape Bangladeshi Buddhism. This requires us to reconsider scholarly assumptions on Bangladeshi Buddhism. As I sketch the outcomes of their transnational connections to survive in a Muslim majority country, I also examine how Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim refugee crisis has put Bangladeshi Buddhists into a difficult situation, requiring them to distance from violent expressions of Buddhism