King, Schneer, and White present the results of a series of 35 experiments on the effect of news media on public expression. Their design involved organizing a set of news organizations to work together and coordinate the publication of stories at random times. The measure of interest was the volume of tweets in the topic area of the stories. The authors find that small-to-medium publications cause about a 19% increase in tweet volume. The study is impressive in its scope and ambition and makes significant process in the study of news media effects. However, the study is certainly limited by the way in which the notion of public expression is operationalized; Twitter is hardly a representation of the public at large and we know from studies of misinformation that information distribution is not balanced across the platform. The authors acknowledge this point, at least in concept, when they consider the potential effect of large publications introducing stories. This work also leaves open the door to ask what practical effect does the introduction of these stories have? What changes beyond an uptick in conversation? What are the pretreatment attitudes of the people taking part in the conversations?

In the wake of the Paris attacks, climate activists and the French government are at odds over plans for a massive protest march on Nov. 29 ahead of the U.N. climate talks. French authorities are threatening to curtail public demonstrations and marches, but climate activists insist the right to protest and freedom of speech must be upheld even during a state of emergency. We speak to Alix Mazounie, the international policies coordinator at Climate Action Network France.