ARIN6902 Internet Cultures and Governance

Short blog post about the loss of privacy that social networks entail. It especially looks at the emergence of foursquare and the foursquare/twitter mashup pleaserobme.com 

The campaign strategy of the newly elected US Senator Scott Brown heavily used the web. Article about how he did this. 

Article from Fibreculture journal.

SMH article about the Australian government's "Gov2.0" initiative which encourages government employees to use social media more.  

A short review on the book "SMS Uprising: Mobile activism in Africa" which is series of essays about the usage of SMS for citizen activism in Africa including in Zimbabwe.

Guest blog on Jenkins' MIT site about internet filtering in Australia by Mark McLelland from University of Wollongong.

Call for consultation regarding Australian government's mandatory internet filtering scheme. 

Abstract In today's digital world, personal privacy has become the number one issue for consumers [9]. Consumers' confidence in personal privacy is directly affecting and limiting the growth of the Internet commercial development. Therefore, it has become a necessity to address the consumers privacy concerns for the interests of the parties involved.

Plurk, a micro-messaging service that competes with Twitter, discovered that it is being blocked in China.

A fair amount has been written about the politics of net neutrality, but its technical aspects have generally pushed the debate to the fringes of the mainstream press.

This study explores an under-studied layer of Chinese Internet censorship: how Chinese Internet companies censor user-generated content, usually by deleting it or preventing its publication. Systematic testing of Chinese blog service providers reveals that domestic censorship is very decentralized with wide variation from company to company. Test results also showed that a great deal of politically sensitive material survives in the Chinese blogosphere, and that chances for its survival can likely be improved with knowledge and strategy. The study concludes that choices and actions by private individuals and companies can have a significant impact on the overall balance of freedom and control in the Chinese blogosphere.