KSU Communications Paper

Often in teaching this class the issues we are discussing are brought into stark focus by events in the news. Last semester a bunch of news about Facebook broke which was based on reporting from a trove of leaked internal documents. The revelations here are disturbing to say the least. But it does provide this class with some important things to discuss. Keep in mind that Facebook is more than Facebook. Indeed they have rebranded as Meta, but like Google they own and control a bunch of stuff: Instagram, WhatsApp, and a ton of analytics platforms you probably never even heard of.

For Tuesday start with this short article explaining what the Facebook Papers are:

• EXPLAINER: Just what are ‘The Facebook Papers,’ anyway?Links to an external site.

Then read the following articles to give you a sense of the breadth of problems uncovered by this leak. Keep in mind that your own experience of Facebook as a young adult in the United States (that is that it is a mostly irrelevant social media platform) is vastly different from huge swaths of the American public, and the world (where it is still a driver of online content even in younger populations).

• “Eight things we learned from the Facebook Papers.”Links to an external site.The Verge. So much is in the papers we could literally spend all semester on this, but start with this article that picks out the 8 most important things for American audiences.
• “History will not Judge Us Kindly.”Links to an external site.The Atlantic. This is a really strong overview about the role Facebook plays in American politics.
• “How Facebook neglected the rest of the world, fueling hate speech and violence in India.”Links to an external site.Washington Post. As bad as the above is in the US context, things are way worse in other countries.

Lastly,

click on this link to get a full list of the coverage,Links to an external site.

note how many articles have been written here. There has been a wide range of coverage (there is stuff on political ramifications, global ones, business ones, company culture, what’s next for FB, . . )