In 44 B.C., as the Roman Republic was entering its death throes after the murder of Julius Ceaesar, orator and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero argued for the end of tyranny and the restoration of the old ways through a series of 14 speeches — a speech thread, if you will — meant to rally against Mark Antony. By the end of 43 B.C., Mark Antony had his revenge: He had Cicero murdered, and in a final act of brutality nailed Cicero’s head and hands to the Rostra, the section of the Forum dedicated to public speakers. It was a sign to anyone thinking using their head or hands to speak out.
It’s easy, in the popular imagination, to think of the historic Forum as a place for civil discourse, where new ideas manifest through informed and structured debate. Civil matters were indeed discussed in the Forum, but not always in civil ways. Fights broke out. Heads literally rolled — and were then pinned to the walls. This was generally not a place for women or non-Roman men, excepting the occasional slave or Vestal Virgin. It’s where Augustus and countless emperors innovated with new forms of propaganda, where rumors flew quickly, fights and arguments erupted, and graffiti told the people’s thoughts in their rawest form. And just outside the Forum, bathrooms and sewers would have been major vectors for disease.
Today, journalists face the digital era equivalent of Cicero’s hands and head nailed to the wall. They face tremendous violence online and off, as leaders wield hateful and authoritarian rhetoric, whip up mob frenzies, and employ cyber troops aimed at silencing dissent through waves of harassment, doxing, and memetic intimidation. Some of these attacks jump offline through physical violence, legal actions, reputational attacks, and enforced disappearances.
Just as Augustus used visuals in the form of statues and mass spectacles in order to reinforce his rule and imperial politics, digital states continue to innovate rapidly. As I wrote earlier this year for The Economist, modern-day states utilize the entertainment methods of today to confuse and distract, borrowing approaches that range from reality television techniques, such as using strong language and emotions and selling merch, to viral methodologies that blend art and entertainment with power.
Disease spreads on the internet in unexpected ways, as Meedan’s Digital Health Lab’s Nat Gyenes and Megan Marrelli have found, because we built an internet without public health standards of care of mind. This shouldn’t surprise us: The Romans developed basic sanitation infrastructure but didn’t understand the nitty gritty of how disease spread. Some of their practices — like public restrooms — offered key technological innovations without ultimately understanding the attendant social risks. Outbreaks of malaria, dysentery, and other devastating diseases swept frequently through the city.
Indeed, it was not just engineering but slavery that made Rome tick. While the aqueducts, arches, and roads of Rome inspire awe even today, few remember the many hands that built and maintained these structures. Today, the emerging technologies of our day — next-day shipping, fancy gadgets, content moderation, artificial intelligence — require underpaid, overworked hands and eyes to maintain the appearance of seamlessness, at the cost of tremendous mental and physical health costs for a broad digital underclass.
By the end of the Roman Empire, the Forum was sacked and ransacked by competing factions vying for political influence, and new squares arose throughout the world in an effort to decentralize power. Rising armies physically dismantled the Forum for its parts, and the site was popularly known as the campo vaccino — “cow field” — until the beginning of modern tourism. Here, too, is a lesson, as states begin to establish their own digital public spaces, from China to Iran to Papua New Guinea, through new platforms and infrastructure, as Sean McDonald and I have written for Foreign Policy. We are steadily watching the unified internet as we once thought we knew it being dismantled and shaped by geopolitical and commercial interests, with attention economics, mob rule, and state power determining whose voices are heard most and whose are silenced entirely.
Without proper care, public spaces like the Roman Forum — designed first and foremost as a place for commercial and state business — can readily become places of exclusion, rumor, disease, politicking, exploitation and open violence as they steadily approach entropy. In this regard, it seems all but apropos that the Forum remains one of the guiding metaphors for the internet, because that is what we find ourselves with today.
From the hopeful starts of the Green Revolution and the Arab Spring onward into the techno-pessimism of today, the past decade has shaped and challenged our understanding of what the internet and media can do for society. Moving forward into 2020, it is now time to ask what society — not just technologists, businesses, and governments — can do for the internet and media.
Those of us in the fields of journalism and media have an obligation to adapt our work for the reality we live in, a digital world rapidly becoming as unsafe for anyone questioning the status quo as it was during the turbulent end of the Roman Republic. What’s become increasingly clear is that figuring out how to make the internet safer, more equitable, and protective of basic human rights is the vital work of this new decade.
In 44 B.C., as the Roman Republic was entering its death throes after the murder of Julius Ceaesar, orator and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero argued for the end of tyranny and the restoration of the old ways through a series of 14 speeches — a speech thread, if you will — meant to rally against Mark Antony. By the end of 43 B.C., Mark Antony had his revenge: He had Cicero murdered, and in a final act of brutality nailed Cicero’s head and hands to the Rostra, the section of the Forum dedicated to public speakers. It was a sign to anyone thinking using their head or hands to speak out.
It’s easy, in the popular imagination, to think of the historic Forum as a place for civil discourse, where new ideas manifest through informed and structured debate. Civil matters were indeed discussed in the Forum, but not always in civil ways. Fights broke out. Heads literally rolled — and were then pinned to the walls. This was generally not a place for women or non-Roman men, excepting the occasional slave or Vestal Virgin. It’s where Augustus and countless emperors innovated with new forms of propaganda, where rumors flew quickly, fights and arguments erupted, and graffiti told the people’s thoughts in their rawest form. And just outside the Forum, bathrooms and sewers would have been major vectors for disease.
Today, journalists face the digital era equivalent of Cicero’s hands and head nailed to the wall. They face tremendous violence online and off, as leaders wield hateful and authoritarian rhetoric, whip up mob frenzies, and employ cyber troops aimed at silencing dissent through waves of harassment, doxing, and memetic intimidation. Some of these attacks jump offline through physical violence, legal actions, reputational attacks, and enforced disappearances.
Just as Augustus used visuals in the form of statues and mass spectacles in order to reinforce his rule and imperial politics, digital states continue to innovate rapidly. As I wrote earlier this year for The Economist, modern-day states utilize the entertainment methods of today to confuse and distract, borrowing approaches that range from reality television techniques, such as using strong language and emotions and selling merch, to viral methodologies that blend art and entertainment with power.
Disease spreads on the internet in unexpected ways, as Meedan’s Digital Health Lab’s Nat Gyenes and Megan Marrelli have found, because we built an internet without public health standards of care of mind. This shouldn’t surprise us: The Romans developed basic sanitation infrastructure but didn’t understand the nitty gritty of how disease spread. Some of their practices — like public restrooms — offered key technological innovations without ultimately understanding the attendant social risks. Outbreaks of malaria, dysentery, and other devastating diseases swept frequently through the city.
Indeed, it was not just engineering but slavery that made Rome tick. While the aqueducts, arches, and roads of Rome inspire awe even today, few remember the many hands that built and maintained these structures. Today, the emerging technologies of our day — next-day shipping, fancy gadgets, content moderation, artificial intelligence — require underpaid, overworked hands and eyes to maintain the appearance of seamlessness, at the cost of tremendous mental and physical health costs for a broad digital underclass.
By the end of the Roman Empire, the Forum was sacked and ransacked by competing factions vying for political influence, and new squares arose throughout the world in an effort to decentralize power. Rising armies physically dismantled the Forum for its parts, and the site was popularly known as the campo vaccino — “cow field” — until the beginning of modern tourism. Here, too, is a lesson, as states begin to establish their own digital public spaces, from China to Iran to Papua New Guinea, through new platforms and infrastructure, as Sean McDonald and I have written for Foreign Policy. We are steadily watching the unified internet as we once thought we knew it being dismantled and shaped by geopolitical and commercial interests, with attention economics, mob rule, and state power determining whose voices are heard most and whose are silenced entirely.
Without proper care, public spaces like the Roman Forum — designed first and foremost as a place for commercial and state business — can readily become places of exclusion, rumor, disease, politicking, exploitation and open violence as they steadily approach entropy. In this regard, it seems all but apropos that the Forum remains one of the guiding metaphors for the internet, because that is what we find ourselves with today.
From the hopeful starts of the Green Revolution and the Arab Spring onward into the techno-pessimism of today, the past decade has shaped and challenged our understanding of what the internet and media can do for society. Moving forward into 2020, it is now time to ask what society — not just technologists, businesses, and governments — can do for the internet and media.
Those of us in the fields of journalism and media have an obligation to adapt our work for the reality we live in, a digital world rapidly becoming as unsafe for anyone questioning the status quo as it was during the turbulent end of the Roman Republic. What’s become increasingly clear is that figuring out how to make the internet safer, more equitable, and protective of basic human rights is the vital work of this new decade.
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Craig Newmark Formalizing newsrooms’ battle against disinformation
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Eric Nuzum Podcasting finally creates another mega-hit show
Kourtney Bitterly Transparency isn’t just a desire, it’s an expectation
Jonas Kaiser Russian bots are just today’s slacktivists
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Brian Moritz The end of “stick to sports”
Gordon Crovitz Fighting misinformation requires journalism, not secret algorithms
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Simon Galperin Journalism becomes more democratic
Stefanie Murray Charitable giving goes collaborative
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Alana Levinson Brand-backed media gets another look
Nathalie Malinarich Betting on loyalty
Richard Tofel A constraint of the reader-revenue model emerges
Heather Bryant Some kinds of journalism aren’t worth saving
Helen Havlak Platforms shine a light on original reporting
Peter Bale Lies get further normalized
Francesco Zaffarano TikTok without generational prejudice
Ben Werdmuller Use the tools of journalism to save it
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Candis Callison Taking a cue from Indigenous journalists on climate change
Catalina Albeanu Rebuilding journalism, together
Bill Grueskin Our ethics codes get an overhaul
Beena Raghavendran The year of the local engagement reporter
Dan Shanoff Sports media enters the Bronny era
Anthony Nadler Clash of Clans: Election Edition
Jasmine McNealy A call for context
Jim Brady We’ll complain about other people living in bubbles while ignoring our own
Kristen Muller The year we operationalize community engagement
Kevin D. Grant The free press stands against authoritarians’ attacks on truth
Geneva Overholser Death to bothsidesism
Joe Amditis Collaborative journalism takes its rightful place at the table
Ernie Smith The death of the industry fad
Jeff Kofman Speed through technology
John Garrett It’s the best time in a century to start a local news organization
Bill Adair A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song
Sarah Marshall The year to learn about news moments
Elizabeth Dunbar Frank talk, and then action
Kerri Hoffman Opening closed systems
Carrie Brown Engaged journalism: It’s finally happening
Tom Glaisyer Journalism can emerge newly vibrant and powerful
Margarita Noriega The platforms try to figure out what to do with single-subject newsrooms
Carl Bialik Journalists will try running the whole shop
Christa Scharfenberg It’s time to make journalism a field that supports and respects women
Steve Henn The dawning audio web
Joanne McNeil A return to blogs (finally? sort of?)
Monica Drake A renewed focus on misinformation
Juleyka Lantigua A changing industry amps up podcasters’ ambitions
Masuma Ahuja Slower, quieter, more measured and thoughtful
Whitney Phillips A time to question core beliefs
Jeremy Olshan All journalism should be service journalism
Linda Solomon Wood Everyone in your organization, moving toward a common goal
J. Siguru Wahutu Western journalists, learn from your African peers
Victor Pickard We reclaim a public good
Jennifer Brandel A love letter from the year 2073
Lauren Duca The rise of the journalistic influencer
M. Scott Havens First-party data becomes media’s most important currency
Joni Deutsch Podcasting unsilences the silent
Jake Shapiro Podcasting gets listener relationship management
Seth C. Lewis 20 questions for 2020
Tamar Charney From broadcast to bespoke
Alfred Hermida and Mary Lynn Young The promise of nonprofit journalism
Sara K. Baranowski A big year for little newspapers
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, collaboration in a time of state attacks
A.J. Bauer A fork in the road for conservative media
John Keefe Journalism gets hacked
Michael W. Wagner Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative
Sarah Schmalbach Journalist, quantify thyself
Monique Judge The year to organize, unionize, and fight
Alexandra Borchardt Get out of the office and talk to people
Josh Schwartz Publishers move beyond the metered paywall
Sue Robinson Campaign coverage as test bed for engagement experiments
Sarah Stonbely More people start caring about news inequality
Talia Stroud The work of reconnecting starts November 4
Mira Lowe The year of student-powered journalism
Doris Truong The year of radical salary transparency
Elizabeth Hansen and Jesse Holcomb Local news initiatives run into a capital shortage
Tonya Mosley The neutrality vs. objectivity game ends
Julia B. Chan We 👏 take 👏 breaks 👏
Rick Berke Incoming fire from both left and right
Alice Antheaume Trade “politics” for “power”
Knight Foundation Five generations of journalists, learning from each other
Don Day Respect the non-paying audience
Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker A call for collaboration between storytelling and tech
Matt DeRienzo Local broadcasters begin to fill the gaps left by newspapers
Meg Marco Everything happens somewhere
Matthew Pressman News consumers divide into haves and have-nots
Laura E. Davis Know the context your journalism is operating within
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The business we want, not the business we had
Fiona Spruill The climate crisis gets the coverage it deserves
Mario García Think small (screen)
Mike Caulfield Native verification tools for the blue checkmark crowd