Careful What You Tweet For

When a staffer at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo posted a link to “The Daily Show” on Twitter, the American and Egyptian governments learned the power of social media; with digital product placement, editors can integrate advertisements into film or television scenes that were never there to begin with; meanwhile, to make way for a parking lot near the 2014 World Cup stadium site in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian authorities are kicking indigenous squatters out. These discoveries and more below.

On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that have found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies.

U.S. Embassy Learns a Hard Lesson About Twitter Old and new diplomacy clashed in the flare-up between Egypt and the United States over the arrest and interrogation of Bassem Youssef — considered the “Jon Stewart of Egypt” — who skewers politicians of all stripes on his popular TV show, El Bernameg.

Digital Product Placement Creates Adverts Out of Thin Air One of the great dilemmas facing the TV and film industry is just how to make money out of a cheapskate audience, who are often not willing to pay for programming or watch adverts.

Would You Believe That The United States Tried To Do Something That Was Not Nice Against Hugo Chávez? Wikileaks has done it again.

Obama’s Forgotten Agenda Two months ago this week, an emboldened President Obama laid out an ambitious agenda for a second term in his State of the Union address.

Brazilian Police Evict Indigenous Squatters from 2014 Stadium Site In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a group of indigenous people have been squatting in abandoned structure near the famous Maracana Stadium since about 2006.

California State U. System Will Expand MOOC Experiment San Jose State University plans to widen its relationship with edX, the nonprofit provider of massive open online courses, and the California State University system is encouraging similar experiments on 11 other campuses.

Ben Franklin, Julian Assange and Bradley Manning “Before the Freedom of Information Act,” Henry Kissinger told a gathering of diplomats in Turkey in March 1975, “I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.’ But since the Freedom of Information Act, I’m afraid to say things like that.”

What Employers Want from Students: ‘More Than a Major’ Business executives care more about their new hires’ thinking, communication and problem-solving skills than they do about their undergraduate majors, according to a survey being released today by the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

A Return to Marx’s Ecological Critique Do oil spills make good economic sense?