Internet Monitor 2014: Reflections on the Digital World

December 2014
Multiple authors

Internet Monitor 2014The Internet Monitor project's second annual report—Internet Monitor 2014: Reflections on the Digital World—is a collection of roughly three dozen short contributions that highlight and discuss some of the most compelling events and trends in the digitally networked environment over the past year. The report focuses on the interplay between technological platforms and policy; growing tensions between protecting personal privacy and using big data for social good; the implications of digital communications tools for public discourse and collective action; and current debates around the future of Internet governance.

This year we are especially excited to share our "Year in Review" interactive timeline, which highlights the year's most fascinating Internet-related news stories, from censorship to Heartbleed to the Pirate Bay raid just last week. We've also included a “By the Numbers” section that is slightly tongue-in-cheek and offers a look at the year’s "important" digital statistics such as the number of tweets per minute in 2014 (up 155,000 from last year) and the number of the top 100 accounts on Twitter that belong to Bollywood stars.

Table of Contents

Download entire report from SSRN

  1. By the Numbers
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  2. Year in Review, Adrienne Debigare, Rebekah Heacock Jones, and Jiou Park
    Interactive version | PDF (visual) | PDF (text only) | poster version
  3. Platforms and Policy, Robert Faris and Rebekah Heacock Jones
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    1. SOPA Lives: Copyright's Existing Power to Block Websites and “Break the Internet,” Andrew Sellars
    2. ABC v. Aereo, Innovation, and the Cloud, Christopher T. Bavitz
    3. The Spanish Origins of the European “Right to be Forgotten”: The Mario Costeja and Les Alfacs Cases, Ana Azurmendi
    4. Troubling Solution to a Real Problem, Jonathan Zittrain
    5. Community Mesh Networks: The Tradeoff Between Privacy, Openness, and Security, Primavera De Filippi
    6. Warrant Canaries Beyond the First Amendment, Jonathon W. Penney
    7. Net Neutrality and Intermediary Liability in Argentina, Eduardo Bertoni
    8. Sexting, Minors, and US Legislation: When Laws Intended to Protect Have Unintended Consequences, Monica Bulger
    9. Devices, Design, and Digital News for India's Next Billion Internet Users, Hasit Shah
    10. Dispute Resolution in the Sharing Economy, Ethan Katsh and Orna Rabinovich-Einy
  5. Data and Privacy, Robert Faris and David R. O'Brien
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    1. Data Revolutions: Bottom-Up Participation or Top-Down Control?, Tim Davies
    2. Everything is Data. Yes, Even Development, Malavika Jayaram
    3. Mapping the Data Ecosystem, Sara M. Watson
    4. Mapping the Next Frontier of Open Data: Corporate Data Sharing, Stefaan G. Verhulst and David Sangokoya
    5. The Social and Technical Tribulations of Data Privacy in a Mobile Society, Adrienne Debigare and Nathan Freitas
    6. The Future of the Internet—and How to Secure It, Andy Ellis
    7. Data Protection and Privacy Law: Where Regulators Are King?, Neal Cohen
    8. Toward a New Approach to Data Protection in the Big Data Era, Alessandro Mantelero
    9. In the Age of the Web, What Does “Public” Mean?, David R. O'Brien
    10. Code is Law, But Law is Increasingly Determining the Ethics of Code, Jonathon W. Penney
    11. Dada Data and the Internet of Paternalistic Things, Sara M. Watson
  6. Public Discourse, Robert Faris
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    1. Flower Speech: New Responses to Hatred Online, Susan Benesch
    2. Facing Unthinkable Threats to Online Speech: Extreme Violence in Mexico and the Middle East, Ellery Biddle
    3. The Use of the Internet to Enforce Religious Hegemony in Saudi Arabia, Helmi Noman
    4. #BBUM and New Media Blacktivism, Clarence Wardell
    5. How Activism and the Internet Can Change Policy, James Losey
    6. Narratives of Conflict: What the 2014 Gaza War Can Tell Us About Discourse on the Internet, Sands Fish and Dalia Othman
    7. Who Do We Trust When Talking About Digital News in Spain?, Charo Sádaba
    8. Why Blogs Still Matter to the Young, Alison J. Head
    9. The Podemos Phenomenon, Jordi Rodriguez Virgili
  7. International Issues: Transnational Legal Tensions and Internet Governance, Robert Faris and Rebekah Heacock Jones
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    1. The Rise of Information Sovereignty, Shawn Powers
    2. Boundless Courts and a Borderless Internet, Vivek Krishnamurthy
    3. The Great Firewall Welcomes You!, Nathan Freitas
    4. Toward an Enhanced Role of Academia in the Debates About the Future of Internet Governance—From Vision to Practice, Urs Gasser
    5. Proliferation of “Internet Governance,” Rolf H. Weber
  8. Looking Forward, Robert Faris
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Download the report on SSRN.

Read and comment on the essays on Medium.

Explore the Year in Review timeline.

Watch the video on YouTube.