Monthly archives: October, 2018

Assessing Online Learning in Law Schools: Students Say Online Classes Deliver

Dutton, Yvonne and Ryznar, Margaret and Long, Kayleigh, Assessing Online Learning in Law Schools: Students Say Online Classes Deliver (October 2018). Denver University Law Review, Forthcoming; Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law Research Paper Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3242824 “This is the first article to provide empirical data on the effectiveness of distance …

Subjects: Education, Legal Research

The Most Common Voting Scams—and How to Get Around Them

LifeHacker: “Voter suppression tactics are as old as the United States itself. Limited enfranchisement, poll taxes, gerrymandering and, more recently, voter ID restrictions and targeted polling site closures have all been used throughout our country’s history to deny the vote to targeted populations. Social media and concerted political action have made these voter scams more …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Social Media

Intentional Bias Is Another Way Artificial Intelligence Could Hurt Us

Scientific American – When AI Misjudgment Is Not an Accident: “The conversation about unconscious bias in artificial intelligence often focuses on algorithms that unintentionally cause disproportionate harm to entire swaths of society—those that wrongly predict black defendants will commit future crimes, for example, or facial-recognition technologies developed mainly by using photos of white men that …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Internet, Knowledge Management

Folksonomies: how to do things with words on social media

Oxford Dictionaries: “Folksonomy, a portmanteau word for ‘folk taxonomy’, is a term for collaborative tagging: the production of user-created ‘tags’ on social media that help readers to find and sort content. In other words, hashtags: #ThrowbackThursday, #DogLife, #MeToo. Because ordinary people create folksonomy tags, folksonomies include categories devised by small communities, subcultures, or even individuals, …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries, Social Media

2018 US congressional midterm elections: case study of third-party tracking scripts on candidate websites

The 2018 United States congressional midterm elections: a case study of third-party tracking scripts on candidate websites, Valmik Patel, October 2018. “Of the 1,008 websites we collected (House and Senate candidates for the 2018 midterm elections), we were left with 981 after removing duplicates and invalid links.  We found that trackers are present on 87% …

Subjects: Congress, Internet, Privacy, Social Media

Research finds large buildup of heat in oceans suggesting a faster rate of global warming

Washington Post: “The world’s oceans have been soaking up far more excess heat in recent decades than scientists realized, suggesting that Earth could be set to warm even faster than predicted in the years ahead, according to new research published Wednesday. Over the past quarter-century, Earth’s oceans have retained 60 percent more heat each year …

Subjects: Climate Change, Environmental Law

U.S. archivists release Watergate report that could be possible ‘road map’ for Mueller

Washington Post: “U.S. archivists on Wednesday revealed one of the last great secrets of the Watergate investigation — the backbone of a long-sealed report used by special prosecutor Leon Jaworski to send Congress evidence in the legal case against President Richard M. Nixon. The release of the referral — delivered in 1974 as impeachment proceedings …

Subjects: Congress, Government Documents, Legal Research

DOJ Announces Launch of New Hate Crimes Website

“The Department today released an update on hate crimes and announced the launch of a new comprehensive hate crimes website designed to provide a centralized portal for the Department’s hate crimes resources for law enforcement, media, researchers, victims, advocacy groups, and other related organizations and individuals. The resources include training materials, technical assistance, videos, research …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Government, Legal Research

Instagrammers Are Being Lured to ‘the World’s Most Epic Pop-Up’ on Nov. 6 (at Every Polling Place)

AdWeek – Millennials try speaking their own language to get out the vote: “If you like limited-time pop-ups that make for great Instagram fodder and seem to attract every celebrity in America, then look no further than the Museum of Voting. Happening only on Nov. 6, it has the vibe of an immersive democratic experience …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Social Media

Statistics and Academic Law Library Survival

The RIPS Law Librarian Blog – Duane Strojny: “..Over the past few years, law school worlds have been drastically altered. The number of students attending law school has dropped significantly. Although the number of LSAT takers has increased slightly, no new large wave of law students will materialize. This has alarmed many in legal academia, …

Subjects: Legal Research, Libraries

5 takeaways from the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment

GreenBiz: “Today, more than 275 brands, retailers, recyclers, governments and NGOs are announcing a shared vision to close the loop on plastic pollution. In a first-of-its-kind collaboration, the signatories to the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment — collectively responsible for producing 20 percent of all plastic packaging globally and represent the full value chain for …

Subjects: Economy, Financial System