Group items tagged

Resources for the study of activist politics, state propaganda, collaboration, dissent, and opinion management on Twitter.

Describes how twitter is being used for citizen participation and "democracy" in various countries from Moldova, Iran and now China. The author proposes that the best way to reduce censorship and promote "democracy" is not political pressure, but to "flood the Chinese market, and those of other countries that restrict freedom of expression, with cutting-edge technology". My opinion: Although Twitter seems to be good at allowing citizens to organise and to create consensus, it does not seem to translate well to actual policy outcome. 

Controversial! But the article summarises many of the difficulties of most opinions on this divide... does bad stuff justify bad laws? The second comment - re why do media exacerbate the situation? is also pertinent. The internet has changed power and social relations causing disequilibrium amongst existing controls and power structures and social norms. This marks a highly contested border dispute.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) scheme has been adopted in Uruguay and Panama, in a move that has received support from US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. The article also refers to the need for more laptops in disaster-affected Haiti, as well as Clinton's opinion on the Google China controversy.

A politician, a political analyst and the editor of the Russian edition of Newsweek have been, supposedly, framed by the Kremlin in order to discredit them. Videos of them in compromising positions have been distributed in the Internet: the web as a channel through which public opinion can be molded by totalitarian states. Political campaigns could "learn" a lot from the Kremlin's actions... 

Blog from the New Internationalist about the movement taking place in the UK to donate votes for the upcoming elections, called "Give Your Vote". The idea is for UK citizens to donate their vote to someone in Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Ghana. These countries were chosen due to the involvement of the UK in all these countries through various ways (ie troops, legislation that has an impact on climate change, trade). In each country they have a sister campaign called "Use a UK Vote". Effectively it is a means for citizens of these nations to voice their opinions. The movement demonstrates global democracy in a sense. A word of warning - if you want to visit the site http://www.giveyourvote.org/ it's not particularly user friendly. Under the heading there are subheadings (however they are invisible).

This opinion piece raises interesting - and difficult - issues surrounding the NBN, and examines many key questions that involve its delivery. Key governance questions are raised, including political imperatives, taxation, and infrastructure delivery.

I found this recent pamphlet about "MicroPublicPlaces" from situatedtechnologies.net while hunting down Latour's Dingpolitik. Arendt's theory of acting (as opposed to Heidegger's thinking) in "The Human Condition" foreshadows Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action, in my opinion, and is seen here as operating in parallel with Latour's object-oriented democracry. Beginning with a critique of the current state of the public realm, they follow two trajectories: one through Hannah Arendt's "vita activa" and Bruno Latour's "dingpolitiks", and another through the history of information and computation technologies. Through the former they establish an understanding of the "public" as a space of difference that is held in common, while through the latter they formulate an infrastructure that could support such a contestable space. This leads them argue for a new public realm built on specific architectural programs (water purification plants, zoos, kindergartens, repair shops, chapels) and adaptive learning environments that initiate collaborative relations between people and machines. Their goal is to foster a manifold public through the participatory structures of MicroPublicPlaces.

Rudd's internet filtering proposal is legally flawed. William's outlines simply how our existing classification system has its own problems and is unsuitable to classify internet content .

It's great to see that there is a legal argument against the filter, but it isn't something that Government is likely to take into consideration as they can easily get around it by defining the legalities surrounding the internet to be different to what we have currently. It proves their hypocrisy, but I doubt that concerns them...

I think the title says it all, really.

Most hacking activities are not reported by the websites that are victim to it, most probably so as not to scare the public. In this article, filmmaker Phillip Mora looks at the activities of hackers and cyber terrorists, likening the potentialities to the Holocaust and 9/11.

So, The UK legislated, before the election, to make ISPs monitor subscribers using illegal downloading sites. As you see in the article. The Lib Dems don't like it much. But since they are just the whiney younger sibling in the New Coalition, their opinion doesn't matter that much and the Conservatives decided to keep it for the moment to 'see how it goes'. Watch this space ...

Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests. The survey - of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries - found strong support for net access on both sides of the digital divide.

This BBC article is based on a extensive survey conducted over 26 countries about people's attitudes towards internet access. Apparently it is now considered a fundamental human right, along with access to basic infrastructure like roads and water.

This article has explored the successful application of internet in Obama's political campaign. Obama's is said to be the first internet president. This article analyzes the advantage of the new media internet campared to the traditional media such as Newspaper, Television, radio, newspaper and so on. As is listed in the article the main advantages of the internet for the campaign use are including the ability to focus on specific demographic segment, and the convenience to create a place for participant to donate, and as is said by the author Samuel Greengard "Obama's staff could conduct polls, solicit ideas and opinions, and hold online town，hall meetings." However this article does not explore the reasons why Internet has this power deeply enough. Behind this power, in my opinoin, it is the "recursive public" that exerts impacts, it would be better if the author also to the "social capital" theory to analyze the power of the internet.

Miranda Devine (yes Miranda Devine) makes some interesting observations and points about the break up of Michael Clarke between Lara Bingle and the role that social networking tools such as Twitter played in this. Devine also touches on issues of sexism and feminism.

South Korean government still thinks that the benefits of censorship are worth the opprobrium. They block dusscusion sites, arrest bloggers for rediculous reasons; for instance, they publish controversial opinions or propagating falsehood online. Since many popular foreign websites such as Google and Youtube decided to require its users to undergo identity verification, Korean internet users have nowhere to have the freedom of speech on the web planet.

An article from China Daily, the Chinese version of why google is leaving China. We need to take a look at both sides of the story!

Andrew Keen gives his opinion about Hunch, the social recommendation engine. Keen has been named "the antichrist of internet" for his critic position against social web. Is he right on this one? As Jimmy Wales says here,  http://twitter.com/jimmy_wales/status/10766582402 I have the hunch that the site is not as bad as Keen claims...

Corporate governance is becoming more and more important, and in considering the growing economies in the Gulf states, there is considerable interest in the region. It will be interesting to see how models of corporate governance may differ in the Gulf countries, especially in relation to board members.

This article is criticizing the attack lunched by Anonymous. It said, the any protest against the Mandatory ISP filtering plan is encouraged, however, the bring down government website is an illegal way to make political statement, and will render the protest null and avoid. Instead, even the anti-censorship community advocate legal way to protest the Mandatory censorship. In my opinion, this attack is interesting, although it is illegal, it doesn't cause big cost, just threw little troubles to government website, it can be considered as a prank, not a crime. Anyway, no one can be convicted, as it is an anonymous attack by hacker, lol.:)