Portside

• Mark’s Meta Megascheme
• The Infrastructure Bill and the Digital Divide
• Coverage of Protests in Cuba, Colombia On Different Planets
• How NFTs Create Value
• China’s Social Media Explosion
• TikTok: Permission to Live Our Lives
• School Surveillance Via Laptops
• Big Media, Stop Feeding the Far Right!
• Critics Discuss Hit TV Shows About Class
• Watching the Media Ignore Eco-Activism at COP26

Mark’s Meta Megascheme

Target: Children  By Prabir Purkayastha, MENAFN

A Growing Monopoly  By Peter Kafka, Vox

Zucker Needs Suckers  By James Muldoon, Jacobin

The Infrastructure Bill and the Digital Divide

By Marc S. Martin and Tyler Robbins
Perkins Come

The bill includes $65 billion for broadband infrastructure and government programs aimed at expanding access to more reliable, affordable, and faster internet services. This will be accomplished through infrastructure grants, service plan subsidies for the disadvantaged, and new labeling requirements on service providers.

Coverage of Protests in Cuba, Colombia On Different Planets

By Mikael Wolfe and Jessica Femenias
NACLA Report

This study examined the coverage of the protests in Colombia and Cuba in the two newspapers during a period of six to eight weeks from the day that the protests broke out in each country. Coverage by The Post and The Times largely conformed to Biden’s foreign policy agenda.

How NFTs Create Value

By Steve Kaczynski and Scott Duke Kominers
Harvard Business Review

By creating a system of verifiable digital ownership, non-fungible tokens fundamentally changed the market for digital assets, creating the possibility for new types of transactions. Amidst a flood of new ventures, however, it can be hard to tell which are creating value and which are just riding the hype.

China’s Social Media Explosion

By Christina Lu
Foreign Policy

Now that all the major U.S. platforms have left the country, what does the world’s largest social media market look like?

TikTok: Permission to Live Our Lives

By Madison Malone Kircher
Slate

The idea that we need permission to celebrate ourselves, to indulge in self-care, has become something of a running theme among several of TikTok’s most popular trends this fall. 

School Surveillance Via Laptops

By Nir Kshetri
The Conversation

Reported provision of laptops by schools to their students doubled from 43% before the pandemic to 86% during the pandemic. But schools also installed artificial intelligence-based surveillance software on these devices to monitor students’ online activities and what is stored in the computer.

Big Media, Stop Feeding the Far Right!

By Jake Johnson
Salon

AT&T—the world’s largest telecom company—played a major role in creating and funding One America News Network, the Trumpite cable outlet that stands to the right of Fox News.

Critics Discuss Hit TV Shows About Class

By Daniel Fienberg and Angie Han
The Hollywood Reporter

The extremes of income disparity shape many of the small screen’s fall offerings — but, THR’s television critics say, not all explorations of class are created equal.

Watching the Media Ignore Eco-Activism at COP26

By Jon Allsop
Columbia Journalism Review

Climate-justice movements (like many other social-justice movements) have historically been marginalized and/or infantilized by swathes of the mainstream media.