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Background: This article examines how the rhetorical style of the "alt-right" builds a political audience through a study of the Rebel, a Canadian YouTube news channel. Analysis: This study analyzes the rhetoric of two hosts on the Rebel, Lauren Southern and Gavin McInnes, and finds their style marked by the use of the vernacular slang associated with subcultural communities of the alt-right. Conclusion and implications: The unique rhetorical style on display points to microcelebrity culture and techniques as a key to the proliferation of the alt-right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Although the popularity of ruins has accompanied Western modernity in waves since the eighteenth century, the post-9/11 decade marks a notable resurgence of the imagery, aesthetics, and rhetoric of ruins, especially in American culture. This article was completed a few months prior to the global COVID-19 crisis. Analysis While many scholars dismiss contemporary forms of ruin gazing as a mindless fascination with disaster and destruction in its virtual circulation, the author contends that this contemporary imaginary has significant political and social implications. Conclusion and implications Although each geographic site of ruination has its own social, political, and historical specificity, the author draws from Cornelius Castoriadis' psychosocial extension of Lacanian theory to designate a broader iconographic and discursive trend in American culture whereby the imagery and rhetoric of destruction contributes to what he calls the "social imaginary of ruination". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background A few years ago, a number of people in Angola were banned from editing Wikipedia Zero because they were concealing large files in the Wikimedia feature, from where the files could be shared in a private Facebook Zero group. Analysis To interpret this case study, the concept of "hacking in" is proposed as part of an open media and technological infrastructure. Conclusions and implications This short case study focuses on the ways in which users shape media infrastructure. These users tried to bypass the restricted conditions imposed on them first by a technology and a media ecology that increasingly resembles a walled-off garden and second by Wikipedia Zero's associated discourse, which reinforced its designer's intentions for the technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarizes two initiatives for artificial intelligence (AI) underway in the Canadian public service: public consultation and collaboration in compiling an algorithmic impact assessment, and a symposium on AI and human rights held by Global Affairs Canada. The findings contextualize the national consultations on digital and data transformation and future steps for more inclusive AI governance in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]