As the CDC rolls out confusing new guidance on mask-wearing and vaccination, Zeynep Tufekci writes about the need to explain the reasoning behind expert guidelines. She notes that the recommendations as issued are “rigid and binary” and don’t include the full range of encounters we navigate in daily life.
The CDC needs clearer, science-based guidelines that inform and empower us. People do not need a complicated patchwork of charts with rigid, binary rules. The science supports a simple guideline that allows for the removal of all mask mandates outdoors, except for unvaccinated people in prolonged close contact, especially that involving talking, yelling, or singing.
Dr. Tufekci also shared a Daily Show clip in which Trevor Noah attempted to interpret the CDC’s recommendations:
For even more mask discussion the BMJ published contrasting views on the topic.
Normalizing crisis
In a new piece titled “Academic Caregivers on Organizational and Community Resilience in Academia (Fuck Individual Resilience),” Shannon McGregor and co-authors Sun Joo (Grace) Ahn, Emily T. Cripe, Brooke Foucault Welles, Katy E. Pearce, Nikki Usher, & Jessica Vitak called for better institutional support for crises.
“Crises, whether society-wide or personal, are endemic to the human condition,” they point out, noting that academia lacks the kinds of parental leave and accommodation policies that allow individuals to respond to crises in their lives, placing a disproportionate burden on individual resilience as a response. They offer targeted recommendations for how publishers, editors, conference organizers, administrators, colleagues, and institutions can build organization-level resilience.
Read the full piece on the CITAP site or in Communication, Culture, and Critique.
Celebration-worthy moves
2021-22 CITAP affiliates: applications are still open—should we be celebrating you as a member of our community next year?
Coming soon
Monday, May 3: Deen Freelon will discuss “A Deepening Crisis: The Role of ‘Digital Surrogate Organizations’ in Conservative Parties” as part of the Conservative Dilemma conference hosted by George Washington University’s Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics and the Social Science Research Council’s Media & Democracy program.
Tuesday, May 11: Francesca Tripodi will talk “Misinformation, Disinformation, and Media Literacy in a Less-Centralized Social Media Universe” as part of the Reimagine the Internet conference from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Institute for Digital Public Infrastructure at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Wednesday, May 12: The new UNC AI Decision-Making Research Program (AI-DR) will host a conversation with founding director Ifeoma Ajunwa and Kate Crawford.
Rest of Web
Daniel Kreiss shared a great thread from Lilliana Mason on why the debate over things such as ‘partisanship’ and ‘polarization’ mask the real debate over racial equality:
Tressie McMillan Cottom chimes in on a discussion about Durham singer Camille Parker, race, and the culture of country music.