My Corbynite mother, Boris abuse, and talking horse sex with Jilly Cooper
In England, lit fests thrive, as Auberon Waugh once put it, because writers hate writing and readers hate reading.
BySocial Media
Find here all of the New Statesman’s comment and analysis about social media and the digital age.
PewDiePie: the rise of YouTube’s biggest star
10 billion views, 40 million subscribers and 15 minutes of video per day – how an unknown 25-year-old Swede conquered the…
By
“A cursed project”: a short history of the Facebook “like” button
Mark Zuckerberg didn't like it, it used to be called the “awesome button”, and FriendFeed got there first.
By
When you receive death threats online, it’s good to know who has your back
To be a woman in the public eye these days, or actually anyone who can operate a Twitter account, means…
By
Ditching Twitter’s 140-character limit won’t engage its legions of ghost users
Sources at the company say Twitter may get rid of the one thing that makes it unique: its 140-character limit. Longform tweets,…
By
Exclusive — Nick Clegg: Brexit likely means “the end of the United Kingdom”
Nick Clegg has warned that “the clock is now ticking” for “the end of the United Kingdom” and that the…
By
Dutch teen Noa Pothoven wasn’t euthanised this weekend. So why did the media say she was?
On Tuesday afternoon, a story began to break across American and European outlets that a 17 year-old Dutch girl named…
By
Flop accounts: Instagram’s latest haven for online bullying
“They kept coming up on my Instagram Explore page,” Elena, a 17-year-old high school student from Ohio, tells me. “I used…
By
Friends, Reunited: the founders of the first big social network are back to try to save it
The three men at the centre of the first social media phenomenon of the millenium tell the story of how…
By
Should we be getting a share of the money our personal data earns?
Facebook collects and sells our data – and yet we seem to care comparatively little that we don’t get a…
By
Social media means the voices of the disabled can no longer be ignored by those in power
The coalition government’s harsh welfare cuts have been met by a surge in activism among disabled people, who have found…
By
Artful procrastination: Cory Arcangel and Jonah Peretti on a book of tweets about writing books
What do you do if you have a novel to write? Go to Twitter, and tweet about the work you're…
By
On Twitter and opinion journalism: what is an opinion worth if everyone has one?
Why should my opinions, or those of other comment journalists, be worth more than those of anyone else, especially now…
By
Sex workers on Facebook are not a sexualised peep show available at all hours
The default assumption when it comes to sex workers on Facebook is that their lives are an open book.
By
Some of my best friends call me Strawberry: the friendships I made and lost playing World of Warcraft
What began as an addictive game soon became more than that – and it was the friendships, not the quests, that…
By
Introducing Social Media Week
We've had long enough to get used to living our lives online – how do we really feel about social media?…
By
Laurie Penny on Facebook’s manipulation: It can manipulate your mood. It can affect whether you vote. When do we start to worry?
The social network admits manipulating its users’ emotions through the content it put in their newsfeeds. Think that’s creepy? A…
By
The danger of Astroturfing: how fake grassroots groups tried to swing Brexit
Manufactured “outreach groups” may have misled the public over connections to Vote Leave, lobbying groups and the Tory party.
ByThe journey and many faces of the hash symbol
From the Romans to Twitter, the hash sign – or octothorpe – has had a rich history, and now this…
ByFacebook introduces choice of 50 genders – but why can’t we write in our own?
The move has been acclaimed as a big step forward, but it was a deliberate and recent policy decision by…
By