(Anti-) Social Media

To Your Humble Blogger, the Internet seems like a wide-open frontier town. People from many different places engaging in many different activities, some legal, some not. Most people are peaceful, but some aren't. In other words, pretty much anything goes on this digital frontier.

National Public Radio recently ran a story in ISIS, the violent Iraqi organization that is spreading its message and finding recruits through social media. Here is the report.

Questions...

•Does the Internet make centralized power more powerful, or does it encourage a decentralization of power? Examples?

•In Functional Analysis, what is the linkage function? How is the linkage function at play here?

•In Functional Analysis, what is the affiliation function? How is the affiliation function at play here?

•Are there any other Functional Analysis concepts from Chapter 2 that apply here?

•To what degree should social media companies police what is said or shown on their sites?

•Whose standard of freedom of speech should be the guideline for social media companies? Why?