Retweeting the Reformation

The Economist on how there is nothing new under the sun:

"The media environment that Luther had shown himself so adept at managing had much in common with today's online ecosystem of blogs, social networks and discussion threads. It was a decentralised system whose participants took care of distribution, deciding collectively which messages to amplify through sharing and recommendation. Modern media theorists refer to participants in such systems as a 'networked public', rather than an 'audience', since they do more than just consume information. Luther would pass the text of a new pamphlet to a friendly printer (no money changed hands) and then wait for it to ripple through the network of printing centres across Germany. [...] A popular pamphlet would thus spread quickly without its author's involvement. As with 'Likes' and retweets today, the number of reprints serves as an indicator of a given item's popularity."

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