2016 World Development Report – “This paper reviews evidence on the use of 23 information and communication technology (ICT) platforms to project citizen voice to improve public service delivery. This meta-analysis focuses on empirical studies of initiatives in the global South, highlighting both citizen uptake (‘yelp’) and the degree to which public service providers respond… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Blogs
Harvard Berkman Center Releases Amber – Tool for Bloggers and Website Owners
“The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is pleased to release Amber, a free software tool for WordPress and Drupal that preserves content and prevents broken links. When installed on a blog or website, Amber can take a snapshot of the content of every linked page, ensuring that even if those pages… Continue Reading
Cyber Squirrel tracks power outages not caused by trees
Cyber Squirrel provides updates on outages that impact the power grid caused by squirrels, and other animals as well. CyberSquirrel also provides an updated map detailing the squirrel related disruptions by location (including those caused by birds, rats, raccoons, snakes and others – however – no trees – I repeat – no trees – which… Continue Reading
We Feel: tracking the mental health of Australia via Twitter and social media
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) [via Data Driven Journalism] “What is We Feel? – We Feel is a project that explores whether social media – specifically Twitter – can provide an accurate, real-time signal of the world’s emotional state. We Feel was designed by and is being provided by the Language and Social… Continue Reading
Happy New Year
Wishing you all serenity, peace, joy, good health and good work in 2016. Your support for beSpacific is greatly appreciated. I look forward to hearing from you in 2016 about topics, issues and documents that I should include in future postings. With my regards — Sabrina. Continue Reading
New Internet Monitor report: “Openness and Restraint: Structure, Discourse, and Contention in Saudi Twitter”
“Internet Monitor, a project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, is delighted to announce the publication of “Openness and Restraint: Structure, Discourse, and Contention in Saudi Twitter,” the eighth in a series of special reports that focus on key events and new developments in Internet freedom. Social, political, and religious… Continue Reading
A New Approach to Procuring Government Technology in California
A New Approach to Procuring Government Technology in California. November 30, 2015 by Dan Hon – “I’ve spent the last few weeks working closely with an amazing team in Sacramento across numerous state government offices to do something new. What was going to be a business-as-usual procurement (a long, thousand-plus page contract for a complete solution,… Continue Reading
Report – ISIS in America: From Retweets to Raqqa
ISIS in America: From Retweets to Raqqa, by Lorenzo Vidino and Seamus Hughes, George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, December 2015. “Searching for Answers – What explains the recent surge in American jihadi recruits? Who are the Americans lured by the siren songs of ISIS’s propaganda? How do they embrace such radical ideology, turning their… Continue Reading
Project to Annotate All Knowledge
“As accessing information becomes less challenging for most of the world, new problems emerge. Discovering, evaluating, and most importantly, connecting relevant knowledge is overwhelming. There hasn’t been a way to bridge the chasm between isolated communities with their specific knowledge base and the rest of us – until now! Hypothes.is launched a mission driven coalition:… Continue Reading
EFF – Google’s Student Tracking Isn’t Limited to Chrome Sync
“Many media reports on (as well as at least one response to) the FTC complaint we submitted yesterday about Google’s violation of the Student Privacy Pledge have focused heavily on one issue—Google’s use of Chrome Sync data for non-educational purposes. This is an important part of our complaint, but we want to clarify that Google… Continue Reading
Thank You From beSpacific to My Readers
I wrote this entry on December 1, 2015 and my email listserv did not send out my postings as usual. So I am re-posting this to be sure that I reach friends and colleagues and readers who continue to include beSpacific as a part of their daily reading. Thank you for reading beSpacific, for supporting… Continue Reading
Brookings Project Paper – The ISIS Twitter Census
The Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World – An Analysis Paper | No. 20, March 2015. The ISIS Twitter Census – Defining and describing the population of ISIS supporters on Twitter. J.M. Berger and Jonathon Morgan. “The Islamic State, known as ISIS or ISIL, has exploited social media, most notoriously Twitter, to… Continue Reading
