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#imweekly: July 22, 2013

by Internet Monitor

Tougher Internet filtering policies are being applied throughout Southeast Asia. The Gambia House of Representatives has enacted a new law banning criticism of government officials online. Russia has been pushing new legislation that allows copyright holders to ask courts to block access not only to allegedly pirated content, but also to hyperlinks to such content.

Map-Based Data Visualizations Reveal Patterns in Human Behavior

by pkumar

Social media companies and researchers use map-based visualizations to link virtual information with the physical world, surfacing patterns of human behavior that dazzle and educate. As cheap data storage abounds and visualization tools proliferate, maps offer a window into how humans live, in addition to guidance on how to get around.

Citizen Sensing and Crisis Informatics: Twitter and Disaster Response

by lgraham

Since it started as a platform designed for cell phone use in 2006, Twitter has become more than just a microblogging service on the Internet. It is a platform for peer-to-peer education and a potential gold mine for citizen sensing, which engages citizens as sensors in generating geo-referenced information. The vast number of tweets and other user-generated bits of content online has prompted new approaches to data analysis.

Twitter's Geography: Visualized and Explained

by pkumar

New research into the Twittersphere reveals that users connect with people nearby and far away at almost equal rates. People also share local and faraway news at almost equal rates. This study, the first to examine tweets based on geography, illustrates that social media helps people transcend the boundaries of distance that have typically hindered communication.

Social Network Alternatives

by rtroumbley

Several of the biggest social networking sites have recently come under fire for being too complicit with government requests for user information, failing to protect activists and dissent online, and enforcing arbitrary posting prohibitions for their users. This article presents the best alternative social networks currently in active development that hope to innovate the way people connect and share information online.