Crowdsourcing and the Crisis-Affected Community: Lessons Learned and Looking Forward From Mission 4636
http://robertmunro.com/mission4636.pdf This article reports on Mission 4636, a real-time humanitarian crowdsourcing initiative that processed 80,000 text messages (SMS) sent from within Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. It was the first time that crowdsourcing (microtasking) had been used for international relief efforts, and is the largest deployment of its kind to date. This article presents analysis […]
Zapaday
http://www.zapaday.com/home/ has launched a news service that publishes breaking future news headlines. The service uses real time analysis of online news and Twitter texts to spot upcoming headlines as they emerge. The site also has a large free news calendar and events service. Events include national holidays and sporting events. See more on the methodology […]
18 days in Egypt
http://beta.18daysinegypt.com/ American documentary filmmaker and journalist Jigar Mehta has launched crowd-sourced interactive documentary project aimed at capturing the history of the revolution in Egypt. Explore videos contributed by citizen journalists on the website. Note it seems to load better using Firefox. The site is powered by GroupStream, an innovative new platform for group storytelling.
Technology and protest
Tell Dave protests: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/britains-web-monitoring-plan-draws-comparisons-to-1984-and-kafka/2012/04/02/gIQAbNB5qS_blog.html This month, to protest against new internet monitoring plans, twitter users utilised hashtag #TellDaveEverything. The protest took the form of listing mundane events that they thought they should tell the prime minister about to make the point that the new laws would ‘snoop into everything’. Coverage from CBC Canada captured examples. There […]
Internet enemies report 2012
Reporters without Borders has publishes the Internet Enemies 2012 Report http://march12.rsf.org/en/#ccenemies This provides rankings and information on nations that censor internet access. Other useful sites on this topic: The Ifex international Freedom of Expression Exchange http://www.ifex.org/ is a good starting point; it aims to rapidly disseminate news and information about freedom of expression violations around the […]
Ministry of Justice website
The Ministry of Justice’s website was relaunched this week. The new design provides easier access to content, with information organised by subject. It has also been designed to better work with mobile technologies such as smart phones and tablets. Twitter users can also follow the Ministry of Justice on @MoJGovUK
UK Education select committee uses Twitter
Interesting development of the use of twitter by the committee. They asked the public to pick a question they would ask the Education Minister Michael Gove. http://twitter.com/#!/search/AskGove For more infromation see: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/education-committee/news/ask-gove-news/
Countries at the Crossroads 2011
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=702 Access the full text of this report from Freedom House. It analyses democratic governance in 35 nations it regards as being at a crossroads in the road to full democracy. These include a number of nations affected by the Arab spring. Topics covered include civil liberties, corruption and the rule of law. Other similar […]
Google Transparency Report
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/governmentrequests/ The official Google website which provides 6-monthly reports on requests from governments to remove content. Country files have graphs of trends plus comment on the content and information on court cases. Materials generally from 2009 onwards. See the notes on limitations to understand how the index is calculated. http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/faq/#governmentrequestsfaq
employability4socialsciences
http://employability4socialsciences.wordpress.com/ This new blog aims to support social science students who are applying for graduate level jobs. It is edited by academic staff at Sheffield Hallam University. Topics covered include career development plans, employability skills and work based learning. Blog posts offer comment and advice. There are future plans to invite special guest writers from […]
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