In an age of 24/7 information, where there’s pressure to stand out, and a general expectation that we should react to news in real time, we need to say something as quickly and emphatically as possible – so we say it with gifs. In a medium where words might be limited, the emotional impact of gifs should be similarly direct: “They’re lingua franca,” says Dr Sarah Thornton, a San Francisco-based sociologist of culture, “They’re not determined by linguistic boundaries, and they are so simple that a child can understand them.”

Before, if you wanted to see — for example — Alexander Hamilton's letters to his wife, you had to travel to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and even then, you'd have to view them on microfilm. Now, Julie Miller, the library's curator of early American manuscripts, says the collection has been digitized. "The web site is meant to open these up to a much broader public," and given the increased interest in Hamilton, the timing is no accident.

Can T-shirts, hoodies and sports socks inspired by God – and worn by Justin Bieber – help to win disciples? Think of church merchandise and you will likely think of mugs decorated with stained glass windows or key chains with bible quotes, sold in a dusty gift shop. But things have changed: for the face of “church merch” in 2017, look in the somewhat unexpected direction of Justin Bieber.

Facebook has removed several posts made by people smugglers openly advertising to attract migrants seeking passage to Europe. Written in Arabic, many of the posts were accompanied by videos and testimonials of what the smugglers claim are successful trips across the Mediterranean from Turkey to Greece, and from Egypt to Italy. All were written in recent months, a time of year when many people attempt the journey.

Ten years ago today, the Twitter hashtag was born with a very simple tweet. [...] And while Twitter is celebrating today by promoting the rise of popular, non-political hashtags like #FollowFriday, #NowPlaying and #ThrowbackThursday, the hashtag’s most meaningful contribution in the U.S. and abroad has been its ability to rally the internet around more serious ideas and issues.

Through the use of social media, travel platforms like Tastemakers Africa, Everyday Africa, Hip Africa, Visiter L’Afrique and others are giving African travel and tourism a fresh and youthful injection by reimagining the possibilities of African travel for Africans, the African diaspora, and international tourists keen to do something other than seeing the “Big Five” on a game reserve truck or buying rugs in Morocco.

In a week of renewed national attention to organized white supremacy, the music-streaming platform Spotify has removed a number of bands alleged to be associated with neo-Nazism.

Apple, LinkedIn, Spotify and Twitter have joined a growing chorus of technology companies to hit out at the far right and Donald Trump's attempt to put white supremacists and leftwing counter-demonstrators at Saturday’s Charlottesville protest on the same moral plane. [...] Apple also pledged to match two-for-one employee donations to human rights groups until 30 September, and said it would roll out donation systems for the SPLC through its iTunes store.