Prague Spring – 50 years on
2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the Prague Spring, a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union. In August 1968 tanks were sent in to crush it. Here are some resources to find out more: Newspaper coverage •New York Times •Guardian •Atlantic -photo essay •Radio Free Europe […]
Open Observatory of Network Interference: Tor Project
A free software, Global Observation Network, for detecting censorship, surveillance and traffic manipulation on the internet. You can look at a map to see measurements of censorship, interference and blocking of social media Its blog has a series of links to recent reports and discussion on use of blocking in specific countries and during individual election […]
New United States elections (and other political) web archives
The Library of Congress has just released a mass of themed web archive collections. In terms of the USA there are over 5,000 websites covered for state, regional and presidential elections from 2000 onwards. It is possible to browse or search the database. The web archive also has a number of other political themed collections […]
International Youth Day
12th August was designated International Youth Day by the UN General Assembly in 1999. To commemorate it here are several resources. End of childhood The Save the Children report, Stolen Childhoods. The report has found that in 2017 1.2 billion childhoods were threatened by conflict, poverty and gender discrimination. Political participation/Engagement UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs […]
UK Web Archive Gender Equality Collection
The UK web archive aims to preserve for posterity websites with UK domain addresses. It has a number of special themed collections. The Gender Equality section is subdivided into specialist sub-sections for body, gender identity, pay equality, suffrage, parenting, domestic abuse and equality in the workplace. 290 sites are currently being archived. It is possible […]
Suffrage exhibition
The Women’s Hall at Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives is the first major exhibition about the East London Federation of the Suffragettes (ELFS). The free exhibition and accompanying events run until 20 October 2018.
World Friendship Day – July 30th
World Friendship day- why it is bad to be lonely? 30th July was designated International day of friendship by the United Nations. The original resolution seeks to promote understanding and bridges between communities however friendship is also important to the mental health and wellbeing of individuals. Failure to address their needs impacts on the economic […]
Trends monitor
Trends Monitor is a research project being undertaken by Media Matters for Democracy to identify and document potential manipulation of political hashtags and conversations on Twitter in Pakistan through ‘human-bots’, especially in the wake of General Elections 2018. Look at the website to view its findings on whether manipulation occurred.
How much fake news is there?
A frightening new report from the Oxford Internet institute has a Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation. It found evidence of formally organised social media manipulation campaigns in 48 countries, an increase of 20 in the last year. One fifth of the manipulation recorded was via messaging apps.
Women & Global Diplomacy: From Peace Movements to the UN
A new webguide from UN Archives Geneva combines primary and secondary sources from both the archives and library of the United Nations at Geneva. The guide starts from the League of Nations and goes to the present day and aims to show students what is available by giving a historical overview and links to resources. There is […]

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