Storytelling: Everybody has a usable past
Read moreOnce again this week, I begin by repeating that I have every intention of coming back to writing about the social media themes in the news these days. In the past several weeks, I have collected an abundance of material from a wide variety of sources. And, I will most assuredly continue to do so, as I find much of
Hillary Clinton returns: What happened?
Read moreBreaking stories about social media, polarization, fake news, and outside influencers are again plentiful this week, and it remains a top-of-mind issue for me. In spite of that, I feel a desire to write about something else I have been watching recently: the return of Hillary Clinton to the public arena, with some truly fascinating television interviews. The defeated former
Social media under scrutiny
Read moreThis week, we seem to be completely awash in information about social media and polarization, which is of course one of my favorite topics at the moment. Every day’s headlines indicate new discoveries about how the popular platforms—Facebook, Twitter, and Google, in particular—were used in deceitful ways by Russian trolls, and a number of other groups. The most recent revelations
Why the internet is a poor source of news
Read moreIn 2014, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stated that one of his company’s goals was to become the primary source of news for all its users. “Our goal is to build the perfect personalized newspaper for every person in the world,” he said. That newspaper would “show you the stuff that’s going to be most interesting to you”. When I read
Are social media becoming too powerful?
Read moreAfter the last post, I was keen to develop a bit further my discussion on PowerPoint. In particular, I wanted to write more about how we misuse slide presentation software, and to explain why I decided not to allow it in my MBA classrooms. In any case, that was my plan. And of course, something came up to change the
To slide or not to slide: reflections on PowerPoint
Read moreThis week, I was thinking about writing something more about our recent themes—polarization, the power of story, or the role Facebook played in recent electoral campaigns. In the end, though, my planning was short-circuited by a Financial Times column on a favorite topic of mine: slide presentation software and its use in organizations and industry conference. On October 1, business