<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">Thank you Colin,<div>May I share this letter with others?<br><br><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-size: 13pt;">Cynthia Greenleaf, PhD</span><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-size: 13pt;">Senior Research Scientist</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-size: 13pt;">Literacy Services, WestEd</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-size: 13pt;">cgreenl@wested.org</span></div><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-size: 13pt;"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br><font>If you received this email message in error, please notify the sender immediately by return email and permanently delete this message and any attachments. Any review, dissemination, copying, or any other use of this message or any of its contents by an unintended recipient is strictly prohibited by WestEd and may be unlawful. WestEd makes no warranty that this email is error- or virus-free.</font></span></div></div></div><div dir="ltr"><br><blockquote type="cite">On Oct 31, 2022, at 7:17 AM, Colin Harrison <colin.harrison@nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:<br><br></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div class="x-apple-outlook-blockquote"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222">Dear editor<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222">If posting baseless conspiracy theory stories that are immediately reposted and that gain tens of thousands of 'likes' within hours is Elon Musk's idea of democratising
social media, then I'm going to follow the lead of other European academics who have contacted me today from Germany and the Netherlands to say that they are permanently unsubscribing from Twitter (Musk posts baseless conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi attack
on Twitter, Guardian, 30 October). I've spent much of the last ten years researching how best to educate young people into becoming safe and confident Internet users, but this becomes more difficult every day. Academics and teachers need to let Musk know that
his thoughtless and dangerous behaviour does not broaden democracy. Instead, it supports the view, already held by tens of millions of Americans, that if you don't like the world that democracy has given you, you simply use money and violence (amplified by
social media) to eliminate it. Twitter has a unique foothold within social media and is widely used by academics, but ELINET, a research consortium of literacy academics from 28 European nations, has already unsubscribed. Musk needs to learn what Kanye West
learned last week: that social media actions have consequences.</span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222"> </span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222">Yours sincerely</span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222"> </span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222">Colin Harrison</span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div><div class="x-apple-outlook-blockquote"><div style="mso-element:para-border-div;border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.5pt;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;padding:0cm"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222">Emeritus Professor of Literacy Studies in Education, University of Nottingham</span></p></div></div></div></blockquote></div></body></html>
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