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.
Seth C. Lewis 20 questions for 2020
Logan Molyneux and Shannon McGregor Think twice before turning to Twitter
Mike Caulfield Native verification tools for the blue checkmark crowd
Matthew Pressman News consumers divide into haves and have-nots
Heidi Tworek The year of positive pushback
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The business we want, not the business we had
John Garrett It’s the best time in a century to start a local news organization
Pablo Boczkowski The day after November 4
Richard Tofel A constraint of the reader-revenue model emerges
Joe Amditis Collaborative journalism takes its rightful place at the table
Craig Newmark Formalizing newsrooms’ battle against disinformation
Linda Solomon Wood Everyone in your organization, moving toward a common goal
Masuma Ahuja Slower, quieter, more measured and thoughtful
Rachel Schallom The value of push alerts goes beyond open rates
Alice Antheaume Trade “politics” for “power”
Whitney Phillips A time to question core beliefs
Elizabeth Dunbar Frank talk, and then action
Cristina Kim Public media stops trying to serve “everybody”
Colleen Shalby Journalists become media literacy teachers
Meg Marco Everything happens somewhere
Jeff Kofman Speed through technology
Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker A call for collaboration between storytelling and tech
Heather Bryant Some kinds of journalism aren’t worth saving
Errin Haines Race and gender aren’t a 2020 story — they’re the story
Jasmine McNealy A call for context
Mariana Moura Santos The future of journalism is collaborative
Francesco Zaffarano TikTok without generational prejudice
Emily Withrow The year we kill the news article
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists get left behind in the industry’s decline
Stefanie Murray Charitable giving goes collaborative
Jakob Moll A slow-moving tech backlash among young people
Alexandra Borchardt Get out of the office and talk to people
S. Mitra Kalita The race to 2021
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Power to the people (on your audience team)
Tonya Mosley The neutrality vs. objectivity game ends
Dannagal G. Young Let’s disrupt the logic that’s driving Americans apart
Elizabeth Hansen and Jesse Holcomb Local news initiatives run into a capital shortage
Annie Rudd The expanded ambiguity of the news photograph
Juleyka Lantigua A changing industry amps up podcasters’ ambitions
Sarah Alvarez I’m ready for post-news
Julia B. Chan We 👏 take 👏 breaks 👏
Anthony Nadler Clash of Clans: Election Edition
J. Siguru Wahutu Western journalists, learn from your African peers
Meredith Artley Stronger solidarity among news organizations
Mario García Think small (screen)
An Xiao Mina The Forum we wanted, the forum we got
Geneva Overholser Death to bothsidesism
Lauren Duca The rise of the journalistic influencer
A.J. Bauer A fork in the road for conservative media
Jennifer Brandel A love letter from the year 2073
Mira Lowe The year of student-powered journalism
Carrie Brown-Smith Engaged journalism: It’s finally happening
Sarah Stonbely More people start caring about news inequality
Catalina Albeanu Rebuilding journalism, together
Monique Judge The year to organize, unionize, and fight
Fiona Spruill The climate crisis gets the coverage it deserves
Sarah Schmalbach Journalist, quantify thyself
Logan Jaffe You don’t need fancy tools to listen
Tom Glaisyer Journalism can emerge newly vibrant and powerful
Simon Galperin Journalism becomes more democratic
Raney Aronson-Rath News deserts will proliferate — but so will new solutions
Jeremy Olshan All journalism should be service journalism
Candis Callison Taking a cue from Indigenous journalists on climate change
Nicholas Jackson What’s left of local gets comfortable with reader support
Imaeyen Ibanga Let’s take it slow
Madelyn Sanfilippo and Yafit Lev-Aretz News coverage gets geo-fragmented
Lucas Graves A smarter conversation about how (and why) fact-checking matters
Bill Adair A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song
Talia Stroud The work of reconnecting starts November 4
Jim Brady We’ll complain about other people living in bubbles while ignoring our own
Irving Washington Leadership isn’t something you learn on the job
Nathalie Malinarich Betting on loyalty
Nushin Rashidian Are platforms a bridge or a lifeline?
Hossein Derakhshan AI can’t conjure up an Errol Morris
Sonali Prasad Climate change storytelling gets multidimensional
Don Day Respect the non-paying audience
Dan Shanoff Sports media enters the Bronny era
Margarita Noriega The platforms try to figure out what to do with single-subject newsrooms
Eric Nuzum Podcasting finally creates another mega-hit show
Peter Bale Lies get further normalized
Jake Shapiro Podcasting gets listener relationship management
Matt DeRienzo Local broadcasters begin to fill the gaps left by newspapers
Joanne McNeil A return to blogs (finally? sort of?)
Felix Salmon Spotify launches a news channel
Christa Scharfenberg It’s time to make journalism a field that supports and respects women
Alfred Hermida and Mary Lynn Young The promise of nonprofit journalism
Kerri Hoffman Opening closed systems
Jonas Kaiser Russian bots are just today’s slacktivists
Rick Berke Incoming fire from both left and right
Kourtney Bitterly Transparency isn’t just a desire, it’s an expectation
Nico Gendron Make better products if you want to reach Gen Z
Sarah Marshall The year to learn about news moments
Ben Werdmuller Use the tools of journalism to save it
Helen Havlak Platforms shine a light on original reporting
Carl Bialik Journalists will try running the whole shop
Sue Robinson Campaign coverage as test bed for engagement experiments
Joshua P. Darr All that campaign cash will make the media’s problems worse
Michael W. Wagner Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative
Kathleen Searles Pay more attention to attention
Joni Deutsch Podcasting unsilences the silent
Cory Haik We’re already consuming the future of news — now we have to produce it
Alana Levinson Brand-backed media gets another look
Sara K. Baranowski A big year for little newspapers
Ståle Grut OSINT journalism goes mainstream
Laura E. Davis Know the context your journalism is operating within
Ernie Smith The death of the industry fad
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, collaboration in a time of state attacks
Tamar Charney From broadcast to bespoke
Bill Grueskin Our ethics codes get an overhaul
Josh Schwartz Publishers move beyond the metered paywall
Steve Henn The dawning audio web
Rachel Davis Mersey The business of local TV news will enter its downward slide
Kevin D. Grant The free press stands against authoritarians’ attacks on truth
Greg Emerson News apps fall further behind
Brian Moritz The end of “stick to sports”
Barbara Gray Join local libraries on the frontlines of civic engagement
Cindy Royal Prepare media students for skills, not job titles
John Keefe Journalism gets hacked
Zizi Papacharissi A president leads, the press follows, reality fades
Beena Raghavendran The year of the local engagement reporter
Tanya Cordrey Saying no to more good ideas
Brenda P. Salinas Treating MP3 files like text
Gordon Crovitz Fighting misinformation requires journalism, not secret algorithms
Victor Pickard We reclaim a public good
Knight Foundation Five generations of journalists, learning from each other
Doris Truong The year of radical salary transparency
M. Scott Havens First-party data becomes media’s most important currency
Monica Drake A renewed focus on misinformation
Kristen Muller The year we operationalize community engagement