Together with her fiancé, movie heartthrob Tyler Harrison, they are Hollywood’s new glitterati.Overnight, however, Ruby’s life implodes when her social media accounts are hacked with a multitude of vile posts, turning her into an international pariah. Even Tyler breaks off their engagement.Confused and heartbroken, Ruby escapes to the beautiful island of Sicily to avoid the media scrutiny and clear her name. With only a Yorkshire Terrier to comfort her, Ruby is befriended by a handsome neighbour and slowly begins to heal.But who is this mysterious man and what are his intentions?When her Sicilian hideaway is compromised, Ruby is once again forced to relocate, this time to the stunning Isle of Skye.In the tranquil cove of Glentorrin, Ruby is left questioning not only who wants to destroy her career, and why but also if celebrity lifestyle is really for her...

    

     Once one of Silicon Valley’s greatest success stories, Facebook has been under constant fire for the past five years, roiled by controversies and crises. It turns out that while the tech giant was connecting the world, they were also mishandling users’ data, spreading fake news, and amplifying dangerous, polarizing hate speech. The company, many said, had simply lost its way. But the truth is far more complex. Leadership decisions enabled, and then attempted to deflect attention from, the crises. Time after time, Facebook’s engineers were instructed to create tools that encouraged people to spend as much time on the platform as possible, even as those same tools boosted inflammatory rhetoric, conspiracy theories, and partisan filter bubbles. And while consumers and lawmakers focused their outrage on privacy breaches and misinformation, Facebook solidified its role as the world’s most voracious data-mining machine, posting record profits, and shoring up its dominance via aggressive lobbying efforts. Drawing on their unrivaled sources, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang take readers inside the complex court politics, alliances and rivalries within the company to shine a light on the fatal cracks in the architecture of the tech behemoth. Their explosive, exclusive reporting led them to a shocking conclusion: The missteps of the last five years were not an anomaly but an inevitability—this is how Facebook was built to perform. In a period of great upheaval, growth has remained the one constant under the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. Both have been held up as archetypes of uniquely 21st century executives—he the tech “boy genius” turned billionaire, she the ultimate woman in business, an inspiration to millions through her books and speeches. But sealed off in tight circles of advisers and hobbled by their own ambition and hubris, each has stood by as their technology is coopted by hate-mongers, criminals and corrupt political regimes across the globe, with devastating consequences. In An Ugly Truth, they are at last held accountable.

    Social media platforms have become toxic and polarizing environments. Many of us are overwhelmed and disillusioned by the endless online conflict and negativity. How did we get here, and what can we do about it? The internet is changing not only how we communicate but also what we communicate. Pastor and former radio host Douglas Bursch provides a spiritual examination of why social media divides people and how Christians can address polarization through a ministry of peacemaking. He unpacks how technology radically changes the way we communicate--digital media dehumanizes and disembodies us, dulling our ability to know when to speak and when to remain silent. But healthy online communication is possible through a constructive posture of reconciliation. Bursch offers practical examples of how to proactively manage social media and handle online conflict in redemptive, reconciling ways. Change the discourse of online Christian communication. Discover how we can use social media in a positive, Christ-like manner.

    We use social media as a mirror to decipher our place in society but, as Chris Bail explains, it functions more like a prism that distorts our identities, empowers status-seeking extremists, and renders moderates all but invisible. Breaking the Social Media Prism challenges common myths about echo chambers, foreign misinformation campaigns, and radicalizing algorithms, revealing that the solution to political tribalism lies deep inside ourselves.Drawing on innovative online experiments and in-depth interviews with social media users from across the political spectrum, this book explains why stepping outside of our echo chambers can make us more polarized, not less. Bail takes you inside the minds of online extremists through vivid narratives that trace their lives on the platforms and off--detailing how they dominate public discourse at the expense of the moderate majority. Wherever you stand on the spectrum of user behavior and political opinion, he offers fresh solutions to counter political tribalism from the bottom up and the top down. He introduces new apps and bots to help readers avoid misperceptions and engage in better conversations with the other side. Finally, he explores what the virtual public square might look like if we could hit reset and redesign social media from scratch through a first-of-its-kind experiment on a new social media platform built for scientific research.Providing data-driven recommendations for strengthening our social media connections, Breaking the Social Media Prism shows how to combat online polarization without deleting our accounts.

    Today's digital technologies are designed to captivate our attention and encroach on our boundaries, shaping how we relate to time and space, to ourselves and others, even to God. Our natural longing for relationship makes us vulnerable to the industrializing effects of social media. While we enjoy the benefits of digital tech, many of us feel troubled with its power and exhausted by its demands for permanent connectivity. Yet even as we grow disenchanted, attempting to resist the digital powers that be might seem like a losing battle. Sociologist Felicia Wu Song has spent years considering the personal and collective dynamics of living in digital ecosystems. In this book she combines psychological, neurological, and sociological insights with theological reflection to explore two major questions:What kind of people are we becoming with personal technologies in hand? And who do we really want to be? Song unpacks the soft tyranny of the digital age, including the values embedded in our apps and the economic systems that drive our habits and their subtle yet pervasive effects. She then explores pathways of meaningful resistance that can be found in Christian tradition, especially counter-narratives about human worth, embodiment, relationality, and time. Considering digital practices through the lens of liturgy and formation, she offers practical experiments for individual and communal change. In our current digital ecologies, small behavioral shifts are not enough to give us freedom. We need a sober and motivating vision of our prospects to help us imagine what kind of life we hope to live--and how we can get there.

    In Overliked, pastor and author Rob Singleton asks readers to take a closer look at the optics in their lives and in the world around them. This is a book about understanding how to see “likes” and “selfie” culture for what they really are and how to connect with the heart of God to build out a new way of thinking about social image. We have technology and social tools all at our disposal, but when we recognize that so many in our culture now look for acceptance in how they’re perceived, feel pressure to project something about themselves that isn’t true, or take action based on facts that have been spun, that’s a problem that runs deep. Singleton shows readers how to find their way through the complexities by pointing them to God, who created truth, genuine love, and meaningful relationships. Written for those who believe—for this generation and the next—that they need to get a better handle on what’s real in this culture and in the lives of those they care about, this book brings authenticity and hope to the center of it all.Singleton offers powerful insights into how we can better leverage the information in the world around us without losing who we are. When we begin to see the real us behind the avatars, we gain the clarity we need to live better, love bigger, and become who we were always meant to be.

    

    Her former friend Rowan—glamorous Instagram star—has money and leisure spare. Once bound by a tragic accident, the two women have lost touch. At least, until Hannah forces herself into Rowan's beautiful world. When a party takes a shocking turn, history starts to repeat itself. Now, the Cambridge police are closing in, and the reunited friendship starts to unravel. Suspected of murder, Hannah and Rowan have to choose: do they keep each others' secrets, or do they try to save themselves? "Influenced is the sort of book where you end up staying up until the middle of the night because you can't let it go. Hannah is a character you fall in love with... and then stay on the edge of your seat as her life spirals out of control. A must read for psychological suspense lovers." -- New York Times and Washington Post Bestseller Mike Omer

    As he asks himself why his cousin's life had turned out so differently from his own, he realizes that it was a matter of conditions. While they both grew up in the same marginalized Chicano community in California, Patrick found himself surrounded by a host of family, friends, and supporters. They created a different narrative for him than the one the rest of the world had succeeded in imposing on his cousin. In short, they created the conditions in which Patrick could not only survive but thrive.Far too much of the literature on leadership tells the story of heroic individuals creating their success by their own efforts. Such stories fail to recognize the structural obstacles to thriving faced by those in marginalized communities. If young people in these communities are to grow up to lives of purpose, others must help create the conditions to make that happen. Pastors, organizational leaders, educators, family, and friends must all perceive their calling to create new stories and new conditions of thriving for those most marginalized. This book offers both inspiration and practical guidance for how to do that. It offers advice on creating safe space for failure, nurturing networks that support young people of color, and professional guidance for how to implement these strategies in one's congregation, school, or community organization.

    But undermining confidence is cynicism: it erodes trust in the media, government, public institutions, and consumer brands. To regain the trust of consumers and citizens, marketers talk about empathy and authenticity. But how do you get beyond those buzzwords? Give more control to your audience--and they'll put more trust in you.It might be a scary proposition, but trading control for confidence fuels a surprising range of high-performing organizations. Airbnb, Zoom, the FBI, TED, the United Kingdom Government Digital Service, The New York Times, America's Test Kitchen, local election commissions, and other organizations have all embraced strategies of content and design that transform their audiences into empowered decision-makers. Smart organizations teach their audiences to evaluate product options, engage in continuous self-education, and make more informed choices.Examining what works among these teams of all stripes and sizes, content strategy expert Margot Bloomstein casts a broad net to capture the experiences of copywriters, designers, creative directors, and CMOs--people who work to build trust through imagery, editorial style, storytelling, and retail design.In an actionable framework focused on voice, volume, and vulnerability, this book will teach you how to employ concrete tactics to help your brand regain trust, respect, and customer loyalty. Lead your organization and audience from cynicism toward something far more productive: hope.

    As a senior engineer at Zach watched in horror from the inside as the 2016 election of Donald Trump drove Google into a frenzy of censorship and political manipulation. The American ideal of an honest, hard-fought battle of ideas—when the contest is over, shaking hands and working together to solve problems—was replaced by a different, darker ethic alien to this country's history as wave after of censorship destroyed free speech and entire market sectors.   Working with New York Times bestselling author Kent Heckenlively (Plague of Corruption), Vorhies and Heckenlively weave a tale of a tech industry once beloved by its central figure for its innovation and original thinking, turned into a terrifying “woke-church” of censorship and political intolerance. For Zach, an intuitive counter-thinker, brought up on the dystopian futures of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Ray Bradbury, it was clear that Google was attempting nothing less than a seamless rewriting of the operating code of reality in which many would not be allowed to participate.   Using Google's own internal search engine, Zach discovered their real "AI-Censorship" system called “Machine Learning Fairness,” which he claims is a merging of critical race theory and AI that was secretly released on their users of search, news and YouTube. He collected and released 950 pages of these documents to the Department of Justice and to the public in the summer of 2019 through Project Veritas with James O'Keefe, which quickly became their most popular whistleblower story, which started a trend of big whistleblowing.   From Google re-writing their news algorithms to target Trump to using human tragedy emergencies to inject permanent blacklists, Zach and Kent provide a “you are there” perspective on how Google turned to the dark side to seize power. They finish by laying out a solution to fight censorship. Read this book if you care to know how Google tries to manipulate, censor, and downrank the voice of its users.

    He’s played himself into a corner. Can they outrun the rumor mill and make way for forever?Hayley Brooke is done with men. So when a sloshed guy at a party makes a sloppy play for her affections, the wedding photographer is relieved when a hunky stranger comes to the rescue. But her gratitude quickly sours when she realizes her savior is the same infamous womanizer she once met on a bad blind date.Mark Hastings is tired of trying to tough it out. Heralded online as the hottest bachelor on the market, the rugby player’s crippling anxiety steers him well away from the suffocating public spotlight. So saving a familiar pretty face and then being rejected is made a million times worse when pictures light up the internet with salacious gossip that suggests they are a couple.Horrified to be caught up in the swell of fangirl spite, Hayley demands he set the record straight by being seen with somebody else… only to be bitten by unexpected jealousy. When they’re forced back together to plan a mutual friend’s engagement bash, they give in to their physical attraction and Mark vows to finally expose his vulnerability.But with social media commenting on their every move, will Hayley ever believe Mark’s love is real?Just My Type is a heart-fluttering contemporary romance novel. If you like endearing characters, steamy excitement, and breathtaking twists, then you’ll adore Sophia Karlson’s sensual scrum.

    Facebook didn’t mean to facilitate a genocide. Twitter didn’t want to be used to harass women. YouTube never planned to radicalise young men. But with billions of users, every time these platforms tweak their algorithms to generate more 'engagement', they bring unrest to previously settled communities and erode our relationships. After all, anger keeps you engaged. It has been hard to address climate change precisely because it has been happening slowly and in plain sight. In the same way, we urgently need to address this social crisis before we reach an irreversible tipping point.

    Polarization is rampant. Polluted information floods social media. Even our best efforts to help clean up can backfire, sending toxins roaring across the landscape. In You Are Here, Whitney Phillips and Ryan Milner offer strategies for navigating increasingly treacherous information flows. Using ecological metaphors, they emphasize how our individual me is entwined within a much larger we, and how everyone fits within an ever-shifting network map.

    Today, the pendulum of public opinion is swinging in the opposite direction as Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, and similar sites are being accused of corrupting our democracy, spreading disinformation, and fanning the flames of hatred. We once marveled at the revolutionary convenience of ordering items online and having them show up on our doorsteps, sometimes overnight. Now we fret about Amazon outsourcing our jobs overseas, or building robots to do them for us. Here, with insightful analysis and in-depth research, Robby Soave explores some of the biggest issues animating both the right and the left: bias, censorship, disinformation, privacy, screen addiction, crime, and more. Far from polemical, Tech Panic is grounded in interviews with insiders at companies like Facebook and Twitter, as well as expert analysis by both tech boosters and skeptics—from Mark Zuckerberg to Josh Hawley. Readers will learn not just about the consequences of Big Tech, but also the consequences of altering the ecosystem that allowed tech to get big. Offering a fresh and crucial perspective on one of the biggest influences of the 21st century, Robby Soave seeks to stand athwart history and yell, Wait, are we sure we really want to do this?

    So rather than read articles that only give you quick fixes and quick tips, this book chronicles Dr. Quick's pre-pandemic doctoral dissertation case study, shares his experience as a digital pastor responding to the pandemic, and offers his insightful quick takes after each chapter.This book provides fundamentals for creating an effective Social Media ministry for outreach and proven strategies for implementing a Social Media ministry by offering precise and definitive information on the pros and cons of having a Social Media ministry.After reading this book, the author's prayer is you will have a better understanding of Social Media ministry, and you will come away equipped and confident in sharing the "Good News" of Jesus Christ online.