Blog

Greek Citizen Journalists Play Prominent Role in Response to Media Blackout

by lgraham

Greece's Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, known as ERT, went silent on June 11, but Greek journalists continued reporting the news on the Internet, via live stream on the European Broadcasting Union's website. People protested in the streets and the citizen media community tackled the government's controversial decision online.

Automating Slanderous Search

by rtroumbley

Is Google's autocomplete function steering users away from buying Microsoft's new gaming console the Xbox One? This article examines the social impact of algorithms and the difficulty their creators face trying to control them once they've been released into the wild Web.

#imweekly: June 24, 2013

by rtroumbley

This week Tunisian turned the building responsible for Internet censorship before the Arab Spring into a hackerspace and wifi hotspot, it was discovered that Pakistan has been using filtering technology managed by a Canadian company, human rights activists investigate the Mexican government's use of FinFisher, and Facebook leaked 600 million users' email addresses and phone numbers.

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.