Berkman center presents: “A Tale of Two Blogospheres

A Tale of Two Blogospheres

from Berkman Center Newsfeed

The Berkman Center is pleased to announce the release of a new paper exploring U.S. political blogs:

A Tale of Two Blogospheres: Discursive Practices on the Left and the Right, by Yochai Benkler, Aaron Shaw, and Victoria Stodden

This paper compares the practices of discursive production and participation among top U.S. political blogs on the left, right, and center during the summer of 2008 and, based on qualitative coding of the top 155, finds evidence of an association between ideological affiliation and the technologies, institutions, and practices of participation across political blogs. Sites on the left adopt more participatory technical platforms; are comprised of significantly fewer sole-authored sites; include user blogs; maintain more fluid boundaries between secondary and primary content; include longer narrative and discussion posts; and (among the top half of the blogs in the papers’ sample) more often use blogs as platforms for mobilization as well as discursive production.

The variations observed between the left and right wings of the U.S. political blogosphere provide insights into how varied patterns of technological adoption and use within a single society may produce distinct effects on democracy and the public sphere. The study also suggests that the prevailing techniques of domain-based link analysis used to study the political blogosphere to date may have fundamental limitations.

To read the full abstract and download the paper, visit http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2010/Tale_Two_Blogospheres_Discursive_Practices_Left_Right

Also, The Nation has published a piece about the study, as well as an interview with Yochai Benkler.

Student Uses Facebook to Organize Massive High School Walkout

from Mashable! by Brenna Ehrlich


Thousands of New Jersey high school students participated in a walkout today in protest of recent education cuts ? all because of a call to action on Facebook.

Akamai State of the Internet Report: Q4 2009

from CenterNetworks by Allen Stern

AkamaiAkamai is out today with their fourth quarter 2009 ?State of the Internet? report. The report is well worth a read as it covers a variety of topics including: security, connection speeds, geography, network access, and Internet penetration. For the second consecutive quarter, the report also includes a section about moible. Some of the interesting stats include:

Is YouTube Right To Take Down Hitler Parodies?

from SocialTimes.com by Megan O’Neill

Hitler YouTubeIn honor of Hitler?s birthday yesterday, news spread on the Internet that YouTube has started taking down Hitler parody videos.  Constantin Film, makers of the 2004 film Downfall, have requested that YouTube remove all videos using clips from their film and YouTube is doing just that.  Since the film?s release six years ago there have been literally hundreds of parodies uploaded, with creators re-subtitling scenes of the film.  Popular clips include ?Hitler Responds to the iPad? and ?Hitler Reacts to the Kanye West Incident at the VMAs?.  The end of an era is approaching as YouTube takes these videos down.

Google’s Buzz ‘in step with EU privacy rules’

from EurActiv.com by Claire

The European Commission has said that Google’s Buzz is in line with the bloc’s data protection guidelines, while 10 national regulators from Canada to the UK are demanding that Google must change the privacy controls of the social networking site.

Do newspaper websites need Google?

from Editors Weblog – all postings by Maria Conde

google.gifGoogle‘s position as a top news site traffic driver has put editors between a rock and a hard place — should they take the leap to remove their content from Google and risk losing readers? Or should they allow the company to financially benefit from content it did not generate?

Facebook Social Plugins and Open Graph: What they mean for online newspapers

from Editors Weblog – all postings by Alexandra Jaffe

Picture  6.pngFacebook is indeed a force to be reckoned with, as it proved at yesterday’s f8 conference by launching a number of wide-reaching additions to the social networking site.  The additions, including something they’ve named the Open Graph and various tools called Social Plugins for third-party websites, will integrate Facebook into the fabric of the web  “so people can have instantly social experiences wherever they go,” said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Newsrooms Should Use Blogs to Battle Bloat, Complexity

from MediaShift

Media professor and writer Clay Shirky recently wrote about The Collapse of Complex Business Models on his blog. That post was in turn inspired by Joseph Tainter’s 1988 book, “The Collapse of Complex Societies.” Shirky wrote:

Be Afraid, America. Be Very Afraid: The Effect of Negative Media

from Neuroanthropology by dlende

By Mallory Meter and Jacob Minnaugh

?The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be president would be ?What the hell do you mean we?re out of missiles?? -Glenn Beck

Comforting? We think not. Luckily, Glenn Beck is not the president of the United States. Still, millions of people every night flip on their T.V. to watch Beck dish out the day?s events. And you can imagine that if his dream presidency would be filled with explosions and bombs, his newscast is too.

Digital Economy Bill (PDF)

Source: House of Commons Library, UK
From the Summary:

The Digital Economy Bill [HL], Bill 89 of 2009-10, is a legislative response to the shift in telecommunications, broadcasting and copyright brought about by the growth in digital technologies. The Bill aims to implement many of the policies elucidated in the Digital Britain white paper (Cm 7650, June 2009). Among the things the Bill does not do is legislate for a Landline Duty (or ?broadband tax?) of 50 pence per month; this is part of the March 2010 Budget.

Technology for Transparency Review, Part II

from Global Voices Online by David Sasaki

This is the second of a three-part series that aims to add more context to the case studies and project listings on the Technology for Transparency Network. You can find part one here.

Over at the Technology for Transparency Network we have already documented 30 technology projects that promote transparency, accountability, and civic engagement, but we still have yet to clearly define each of those concepts and explain in detail why they are valued in bringing about good governance and a healthy society.

Global Voices Author Demographics 2010

from Global Voices Online by Lokman Tsui

Author iconWho are Global Voices Authors, what is their background, and what do they think about the future of Global Voices, journalism and citizen media? In a series of posts, we are sharing results from the Global Voices Author Survey in 2010. 116 Authors answered the anonymous survey in April. 87% of the respondents identified themselves as active Authors (at least one post in the last three months) the other 13% indicated they were currently inactive.

Herbert Lin ? the implications of cyberwarfare

from …My heart’s in Accra by Ethan

Dr. Herbert Lin of the National Academies led a team to develop a study of cybersecurity and cyberattack for the MacArthur foundation. The report, ?Cyberattack Capabilities?, is the first major unclassified look at cyberattack capabilities, Lin tells us.

Harassment by Q&A: Initial Thoughts on Formspring.me

from apophenia

The State of Online Word of Mouth Marketing [STATS]

from Mashable! by Barb Dybwad


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