More than 49,000 people tell Facebook that they will attend Saturday’s class-related metro protest in Brazil.

The powerful love the silence of others, and the powerful love to listen. On 5/11/11, Freedom ♡ (@tweets4peace) writes: “#childhoodmemories Probably before learning my abc I knew I couldn’t say a word about Syrian politics or Assad family.” [ http://is.gd/2CPHcX ] And this: “Families have been asked to go into the streets as homes are searched.…

Emily Bell on “the live updating stream of thought and reaction” that is available to most of us: http://wp.me/pZdr6-2j @EmilyBell This “live updating stream of thought and reaction” matters as it hooks into lives, groups, and institutions. http://t.co/zUlaEWa @EmilyBell Schools in a democracy should teach citizens how to create “little messages that matter” in this…

Žižek on the ongoing commercialization, that is, destruction, of the Open Web, where “Everything thus becomes accessible, but only as mediated through a company which owns it all.” Via @evgenymorozov. Some, such as Dave Winer, call this the creation of a silo or walled garden.

I notice that the Guardian’s editorial this week celebrating 190 years of the paper’s existence manages to stay calm about what to call these people who participate in new ways in the work of informing others. In the last paragraph, the writer acknowledges that in this time of industry revolution, the names change, necessarily, as…

In “What I Think I Know About Journalism,” Jay Rosen’s 25th anniversary reflection on what he’s learned about his field, the fourth point keeps calling me back. I notice the tightly worded section title, where similar phrases represent very different meanings. That means we can’t think our way through the problems of journalism today, which…

The sixty second video version of parts two and three of last year’s public lecture on literacy and active citizenship, or to put it another way, how citizens make their words matter in a Facebook/Twitter world. _______________________________ Photo credits. Freisler saluting (German National Archive). Otto Hampel (Gestapo file). Postcard (Appendix, Every Man Dies Alone). Guillotine…

At my earlier blog, Elizabeth Edwards joined a 2003 conversation about the quality of political discourse, making a distinction between political speech that is essentially marketing and speech that creates “a community of thought, analysis, and exchange.” Here is her entry: As someone who has participated in online dialogues for years (previously in newsgroups, now…

Concerning the Wikileaks work of Julian Assange, Misha Glenny writes about the traditional imbalance between a government’s access to information and the access of the rest of us: [K]nowledge translates into power and influence. For most of history, government has enjoyed an easy superiority in adjusting the ebb and flow of information. Now the rules…

In the NY Times Diagnosis feature this week a key element of the story is a husband who tells a doctor that she has to reconsider the diagnosis and treatment being given his wife because it is not working. “We can’t go on this way,” he tells her. For whatever reason, Dr. Lisa Sanders is…