Communications Major

Democrats are breathing easier. Republicans are crying censorship. For all of the country’s news consumers, a strange quiet has descended after a four-year bombardment of presidential verbiage.

Twitter and Facebook on Wednesday locked the accounts of President Trump, which prevents him from posting messages to his more than 88 million followers on Twitter and 35 million followers on Facebook, after he published a string of inaccurate and inflammatory messages on a day of violence in the nation’s capital.

The moves were an unprecedented rebuke of Mr. Trump by the social media companies, which have long been megaphones for the president.

Nearly three out of four social media users think President Donald Trump should face a permanent ban or temporary suspension on social media if he spreads misinformation about the coronavirus outbreak, according to a new poll from Morning Consult.

The poll of 2,044 social media users found a near even split on whether Trump should face a ban or suspension — 37 percent believe he should get a permanent ban, 36 percent think Trump should be temporarily suspended. Politicians and journalists were among the most common professions that people believed should face repercussions over false or misleading information related to Covid-19.

Inside the alternate reality of the president’s Twitter account, where he absorbs and amplifies a noxious stream of disinformation.

Critics have wondered whether the president’s more violent tweets — including those directed at North Korea — could merit a suspension or ban. Here’s what Twitter says.

Russia was involved.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, promised “more human review and oversight” to make sure offensive terms aren’t used to target ads.

President Trump turned his morning tweetstorm about the travel ban into a Facebook video and the result was ... not good. It seems you can now create a "video" from tweets and old campaign photos. Who needs PowerPoint!?

The term "troll" is now widely used to mean "a nasty person on the Internet," but it's worth keeping in mind its more specific, original meaning: someone who seeks to provoke outrage for their own amusement. This is, often as not, done through weaponizing insincerity: pretending to be something they're not, or to care about an issue in order to upset those who do. A classic example would be someone posting steak recipes on a vegan message board. His personal views on veganism are irrelevant – all that matters is his desire to upset the people on that particular forum and the pleasure he derives from it.

Psychologist Michal Kosinski developed a method to analyze people in minute detail based on their Facebook activity. Did a similar tool help propel Donald Trump to victory? Two reporters from Zurich-based Das Magazin went data-gathering.​

The dystopian novel, published in 1949, about tyranny and the suppression of critical thought, has found a fresh audience in the United States. Earlier today, it was reported that Amazon has sold out of its copies.

Whoops! A so-called "twitter rally" in support of the President quickly turned into a Trump "bash".

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that the company is blocking US President Donald Trump from its platform “indefinitely.” The ban will be in place for “at least the next two weeks,” the company said.

This is the first time a major platform has banned Trump.

David Plouffe, the former Obama campaign manager, will advise the effort, which aims to compete with the president on his terms.

Last month, anchors at local news stations across the country made identical comments about media bias. The script came from their owner, the right-leaning, pro-Trump Sinclair Broadcast Group.

On Thursday night, Trump's account was briefly deactivated by a rogue customer support employee on their last day of work at Twitter. The fact that a single Twitter employee could shutdown the account of a major public figure without oversight raises serious questions about the site's security.

A petition launched by billionaire Democratic donor Tom Steyer calling for President Trump's impeachment has surpassed 1 million signatures.

Barack Obama's tweet condemning racism following the violent far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, has become the most-liked in Twitter history.

A late night "butt tweet" freaks out America.

Trump’s followers see a completely different presidency than the rest of the world sees. That’s because they are watching, reading or listening to right-wing media — and right-wing media is showing them a presidency that does not exist. After decades of Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and Breitbart, conservatives can no longer tell fact from fiction. 

We’re witnessing the stirrings of a national popular movement aimed at defeating the policies of the president.

Why phone calls? Unlike signatures on a Change.org petition—or tweets or Facebook comments—a phone call can't be scrolled past; when you call your representative or senator, a staffer has to take the time to speak to you and write down your comments (or copies down what you say in your voicemail). A day of sustained phone calls from an outraged public played a big role in convincing congressional Republicans not to declaw the Office of Congressional Ethics.

For a generation of phone-phobic Americans who haven't spoken into a telephone since we came up with apps for ordering pizza, "call your representative" is a small task that can sound daunting. Social media in the weeks after the election was flooded with posts from users desperate to make their voices heard but stymied by the anxiety of actually calling. (I was one of them; I have intense phone anxiety, and after my first phone call to my senator, I had to cry into a cup of tea for a few minutes.) This is what Zisook and organizers like her hope to change—to normalize two-way communication between representatives and their constituents.

BuzzFeed's bogus rationale for publishing the Trump "dossier" is just the latest sign of the profession's implosion...