Yesterday my daughter walked out of her room and remarked, "Your University is trending on both Twitter and Facebook". We turned on the television to find, on all news channels, local and national, tickers and loud anchors screaming one recycled opinion or speculation after another, in the new manner of news presentation where the loudest supposition parades as established fact. The news of a research scholar's suicide triggered a huge outcry and massive mobilization of students across a part of the political spectrum, the likes of which I have not seen on campus in recent times. As might be expected, social media amplified and extended the protests, with academics and students at all levels sharing the handful of news stories that reported the incident as well as the poignant suicide note left by the scholar. If virality is marked by an exponentially increasing, widly tangled network of shares and forwards and likes and comments, then this issue has exposed the nature...
making sense of the everyday