New resources on women’s suffrage
A new teaching resource Endell Street – Women’s Military Hospital Project, focuses on the changing role of women from the 1900s to 1920, with a particular emphasis on women’s contribution to medical professions during World War One. It focuses on primary sources from the Women’s Library. More information on the Women’s Military Hospital is available […]
Freedom on the Net report 2018 launched
Freedom House has just launched its latest annual report on the state of democracy and freedom on the Internet. It also contains has rankings of nations according to measurements of their openness. Out of 65 countries assessed 25 recorded a loss of some freedom. China was the least free nation.
US Mid-Term Elections
Lots of links on this subject. New York Times collected examples of misinformation over 4,000 were sent from social media. Other sources of fact checking and overviews of political accuracy include: Politfact has been checking claims made about the election by the President and other commentators Washington Post fact-checker Media Matters for America News coverage […]
Advertising on Social Media
As a move to greater transparency Facebook has launched this searchable database about political adverts appearing on Facebook and who is funding them. It covers US election spending. There are also statistical snapshots taken every week. Google transparency report also has a political ads section and Twitter has a list of political campaign advertisers.
Twitter release data on state-backed propaganda from Iran and Russia
https://about.twitter.com/en_us/values/elections-integrity.html#data As part of it openness and transparency policy, Twitter have released information and datasets indicating that thousands of sources from Russia were used during the USA election campaign to manipulate news sources. TechCrunch discusses and gives links to the datasets.
Election Access Observation Toolkit
The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), along with the Disabled Person’s Organization (DPO) has developed an Election Access Observation Toolkit. The 122 page book sets out barriers to access, international and regional legal provisions/ instruments and guidelines for organising election access observations.
Violence against women in elections
IFES release reports about violence against women in elections. Their website now includes a section which documents efforts to measure and combat this. It includes coverage of the IFES-led VAWE Online sentiment analysis tool which captures direct threats and abusive and violent comment surrounding women’s political participation. It analyses big data content from social media.
Congressional Reports Service website launched
Recently launched, an official website which provides free access to non-confidential briefing papers and reports supplied to members of the US Congress. They are working to add back files. See the FAQS for details of inclusions and material that will be added. These are excellent for gaining an understanding of the US legislative process, they […]
Women are not represented in Local Government
According to the latest report issued by the Fawcett Society The proportion of female councillors is still only 34%. Download the full data table and analysis of the recent Local Government Commission report from the website
Expanded Hansard coverage for UK Parliament website
A new redesigned site now offers 200 years of parliamentary debates from the main UK website. You can quickly search by Members, debates and petitions. If something has disappeared from the main UK parliament website remember they have their own specialist web archive which also includes social media (Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram) curated by Parliamentary archives […]
Recent Comments