Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
Image Description: the front of Buckingham Palace With 4.6 million followers on Twitter and 10.3 million on Instagram, the Royal Family have undeniably built up a large online audience in the last decade since the palace started using social media as a tool for communication. This is before we even start considering the social media […]
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Image Description: the logos of Google, Apple, and Facebook aligned horizontally CW: mention of self-harm and addiction I’ve always been totally indifferent to the harvesting of my data. Why should I care that the government and a small cohort of multinational corporations can access the totally uninteresting mass of information that has accumulated to form […]
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Image description: a young woman sitting on a couch with a MacBook on her lap and an iPhone next to her. TW: this article discusses mental health issues, including mentions of suicide and suicidal thoughts. Shocking headlines such as “Instagram ‘helped kill my daughter’” (BBC) and “Mum’s torment over suicide of her Snapchat addict daughter, […]
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Image Description: Social Media logos on a purple and blue background. This week our columnists discuss the pitfalls and triumphs of social media, and whether it should be more strongly regulated… Clara Morrissey is a second year Theology student at Keble, and our On the Right columnist. A dialogue taken from George Orwell’s 1984 between […]
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Image description: a phone with the Twitter app open on its screen lying on top of a box labelled “HANDLE WITH CARE” There was a period of a few days in early January when huge civil unrest was not only possible, but likely. A base of millions of Americans across the country stood convinced that […]
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Image description: a silhouette of a hand holds out a phone with the TikTok app open In my time writing for OxStu, I’ve written on a wide range of different issues. Typically, I have tended to avoid talking too much about myself, with the exception of discussing my relationship and my partner James. Talking about […]
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Image Description: Gina Martin in front of a blue background Trigger Warning: Discussion of upskirting, sexual assault and rape Next up in our ‘Womxn on the Move’ series is Gina Martin: campaigner, speaker and writer who took on the government to make upskirting (taking a sexually intrusive and non-consensual photograph up someone’s skirt) illegal in […]
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In the context of Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo movement, the refugee crisis and countless other events, social media activism has been at an all-time high. Individuals, mostly teenagers, sign petitions, share content and urge people to donate online. Some argue this is unsustainable and is merely “slacktivism”, but there is great potential for this […]
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I saw one of my close friends – who importantly is one of my POC friends – the other day, and I expressed the unshakeable feeling I had of being rubbed the wrong way by some friends’ silence, in the recent outcry against the murder of George Floyd. She immediately validated my feelings and I […]
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One of the beautiful things about living in the age of social media is the speed at which news can travel and spread, irrespective of what part of the world you are in. Never has this been clearer than now – as the story of George Floyd has gripped a world struggling in the throes […]
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There is no doubt that technology has stepped in to attempt to fill the many voids in our lives created by the Lockdown restrictions. From education to socialising to entertainment, we all rely on technology now more than ever to allow us to continue with our daily activities. One of the most obvious ways in […]
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Sweaty selfies, videos of impressive loo roll kicking, and photos mysteriously captioned “until tomorrow”. As lockdown keeps people inside and online, social media challenges are springing up left and right. Most of these, like the toilet roll challenge, are a quick fix for isolation boredom. Others, like the “Run for Heroes” challenge, involve donations and […]
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Four Oxford students have set up a page dedicated to sharing the quarantine stories of students from around the university. Posting on Facebook and Instagram under the name OxQuarantine the accounts ask people to send in a 200-300 word description of their isolation experience along with a photo of themselves or something related to what […]
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Image Description: A girl using the Whatsapp messenger service to connect with friends. Five minutes ago, I left a four-hour Skype call with some of my Oxford friends. Yesterday, I spoke to another friend for four hours via Facebook. I have never socialised more than I am now. That’s despite being on vacation, so its […]
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Coronavirus, leaving us cooped up in our homes, has predictably also left many of us bored. We’ve been forced to rebuild our daily lives into some semblance of a routine. Once it became clear I had fewer hobbies and interests than I thought, I succumbed to downloading Houseparty to stay connected during lockdown. It was […]
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Smartphones are one of the best tools in modern history. We have a second brain in the palm of our hands, ready to help us answer and solve the many problems we cannot fix on our own. The Internet itself is a modern marvel and having access to it anywhere and everywhere opens up a […]
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Image description: Pepe the Frog. Like quite a lot of people, I’m not really about Facebook. I’m on it, sure, and I am worryingly reliant on Messenger, and find it useful for events. I don’t intend to bestow upon myself the kind of fashionably late aloof social credo that comes with deleting the whole thing […]
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Image description: Several people on mobile phones. The recent call for age restrictions on likes and streaks on Facebook and Snapchat is long overdue, but does not go far enough. Restrictions should not discriminate; people of all ages should be protected from the psychological damage caused by likes, streaks and other online ‘reward’ mechanisms used by […]
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Yes, Facebook is back in our news feeds. The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee has published its long awaited 111-page Final Report on disinformation and ‘fake news’, and it’s fair to say that Facebook would give it an angry react. The work of over 18 months of a committee that has worked with 8 […]
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