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Muhammed, Miss World, and Mobile Phones
Posted by James Grimmelmann on Tuesday, November 26 @ 00:06:40 EST Free Expression
Last week in Nigeria, more than 100 people died in riots started after the ThisDay newspaper outraged Muslims by suggesting that Muhammed would have approved of the Miss World pageant and chosen a wife from among the contestants.

An alert subscriber to Declan McCullagh's Politech mailing list noticed two different newspaper articles fixing some of the blame on technology. First, word of the offensive comments in ThisDay was distributed rapidly by text messages. Second, the newspaper's apology claimed that the offending passage had been set to be rewritten, but that the computer ate the revision.

If both stories are to be believed, raging mobs were using technology more effectively than were newspaper editors, assorted stereotypes notwithstanding.

 
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