Other articles

1. Radway spoke of but failed to recognize parasocial relationships

   In Janice Radway’s classic Reading the Romance of 1984, she referred to the romance-purchasing customers of a small-town bookstore as a “female community — mediated …

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2. AOL Keywords circa 1996

   Have you ever wanted to examine all AOL keywords for its 5,122 public chatrooms circa 1996? Probably not, but I did as part of …

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3. Creation and size of advice subreddits

   I’ve been working on a history of advice subreddits and subreddit-plot.py generates a useful bubble plot.

   

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4. Self in Webster’s dictionary and self-help

   In a 99% Invisible episode, Avery Trufelman stated that America’s 19th-century preoccupation with the self and self-help was reflected in the fact that Webster …

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5. Wikipedia’s wiped edit

   Yesterday I was surprised to see widespread headlines that Wikipedia’s “first edit” was being auctioned as a NFT. That wasn’t right, and I …

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6. Accident, luck, contingency, and meaning

   In the conclusion to Mako Hill’s article “Almost Wikipedia,” he takes issue with my characterization of Wikipedia’s success as luck . (To be clear …

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7. Proto-twitter meets Twitter

   Nick Bilton’s Hatching Twitter tells of four friends who became rivals in the claim for having “founded” Twitter. (A recurring narrative well captured in …

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8. Wikipedia and modes of encyclopedic production

   I’m happy to note that a pre-print of Jeff Loveland’s and my article on encyclopedic production is now available. Originally it was toll …

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