Today, The Lancet published “Ten scientific reasons in support of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2,” co-authored by Zeynep Tufekci, alongside Trisha Greenhalgh, Jose L Jimenez, Kimberly A Prather, David Fisman, and Robert Schooley.
If medical journals are not your typical idea of light reading, you may be surprised: it’s a succinct round-up of documented evidence that supports understanding Covid as a primarily-airborne disease:
In conclusion, we propose that it is a scientific error to use lack of direct evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in some air samples to cast doubt on airborne transmission while overlooking the quality and strength of the overall evidence base. There is consistent, strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 spreads by airborne transmission. Although other routes can contribute, we believe that the airborne route is likely to be dominant. The public health community should act accordingly and without further delay.
Thick discourse doesn’t scale
On Tuesday, Tressie McMillan Cottom appeared on the Ezra Klein Show for a wide-ranging podcast. They discussed status structures, framing disability, the limits of our imaginations in recognizing genius, and much more.
Within that conversation, Klein referenced the idea of thick description, noting “we are having the thickest conversation possible in the thinnest mediums possible.” Dr. McMillan Cottom’s thoughts on the mismatch between topics of public dialogue and the venues is worth quoting:
I think what we’re seeing is an unspoken desire for exactly that kind of [thick] work, but a media ecosystem and an attention economy that just cannot allow that to happen. That takes a lot of human beings, a lot of human power, takes a lot of willingness to embrace risk because you’re going to mess it up. You’re going to fail, and you’re going to piss somebody — right? This is just going to happen. There’s a lot of risk involved.
We don’t have a culture right now for scale and efficiency that can be productive. That’s for a culture that mostly agrees on who and what it is is mostly functioning the way most people need it to function for a good life. We don’t have that culture. And so I tell people, maximizing efficiency is for very different political body and public discourse than the one we have. The one we have is trying to grapple with potentially massive social change and social transformation. That is a culture that needs messier, more nuanced places for public discourse. Trying to skip over that to get to the scale and efficiency part is how you become antagonistic to the audience.
Recent publications and appearances
"If you have something like Instagram, which has been designed for a type of lifestyle sharing, what does it mean to make violence legible?” Rachel Kuo spoke with Vox about how Asian news sites like NextShark brought attention to anti-Asian racism at the cost of circulating graphic imagery.
“If I was a betting man, I would say that the early rulings would lead me to expect that the oversight board will overturn Facebook's decisions.” Daniel Kreiss and Shannon McGregor were quoted by Politico on Facebook’s past content moderation failings and their implication for the oversight board’s consideration of Donald Trump’s suspension.
Zeynep Tufekci weighed in on the media framing of ‘breakthrough’ variants, criticizing alarmist headlines in particular:
The “Informal, Criminalized, Precarious: Sex Workers Organizing Against Barriers” conference is wrapping up, but you can still view recordings of past panels on the conference site.
Coming soon
Alice Marwick will speak on a panel about disinformation in the digital age for the 2021 #SpeechMatters conference on April 20.
On April 24, Rachel Kuo will lead an Asian-American Feminist Media Making Workshop for the NYC Asian American Student Conference.
Rachel Kuo is co-facilitating an Ethical and Effective Public Scholarship workshop on April 30, as part of Boston College’s conference on Building the Fugitive Academy: Communication, Culture, Media, & Rhetoric Scholars on the Work of Transformation.
Francesca Tripodi will talk “Misinformation, Disinformation, and Media Literacy in a Less-Centralized Social Media Universe” on Tuesday, May 11 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.
And on May 12, the new UNC AI Decision-Making Research Program (AI-DR) will host a conversation with founding director Ifeoma Ajunwa and Kate Crawford. We’re excited to welcome AI-DR to the UNC community and hope you’ll join us in celebrating their launch!
Rest of Web
The University of Amsterdam is hiring eight(!) faculty positions in their Department of Media Studies.
The Markup published a new report on Google blocking advertisers from using social and racial justice terms, including Black Lives Matter, to find YouTube videos and channels upon which to advertise.
The Guardian covers how Facebook allowed political actors to generate fake public engagement using Pages, and the work of one since-departed data scientist to counter these abuses.