Government & Politics
Along with the other free peoples of the Internet, we’ve been discussing our reactions to PRISM, and whether and how U.S. — and global — citizens might be able to organize against this unprecedented digital spying. There are more questions than answers at the moment, and there’s an enormous challenge of confronting a massive entity [...] more »
In recent years, “public service media” has emerged as the term describing all that’s right with public media, community media, and non-profit journalism, and how those three sectors could be collaborating to function more perfectly in a new telecommunications-reformed promised land. Largely overlooked in these future of media discussions are two types of simple, non-edited [...] more »
The information office of the highest court in Massachusetts just launched a new online registration process for citizens and news organizations wishing to use cameras and other electronic equipment to cover court hearings throughout the state. The process is a lead-in for amended courtroom media rules that become effective next month. Key changes to Rule [...] more »
The MIT Technology Review recently posted an article titled, “Campaigns to Track Voters with ‘Political Cookies.” It freaks me out for a reason I’ll get to below. From Technology Review: The technology involves matching a person’s web identity with information gathered about that person offline, including his or her party registration, voting history, charitable donations, [...] more »
To bring key aid agencies together and help drive international response, the [SahelResponse.org](http://sahelresponse.org/) data-sharing initiative maps information about the ongoing food crisis in the Sahel region of West Africa. More than 18 million people across the Sahel are at risk and in need of food assistance in the coming months, according to the United Nations. [...] more »
At Ushahidi, we have interacted with various organizations around the world, and the key thing we remember from reaching out to some NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in Kenya is that we faced a lot of resistance when we began in 2008, with organizations not willing to share data which was often in PDFs and not in [...] more »
As Americans turn more to online news sources, a panel at this week’s SXSW Interactive conference will look at the Americans who aren’t going online for news. They are, among other things, often rural and poor. And that’s exactly the audience at which the OpenRural project is aiming. The panel was organized by Fiona Morgan, [...] more »
Since the OpenRural project started in November, one of my primary efforts has been to lift the hood on the OpenBlock application itself and find the “unknown unknowns,” as a former defense secretary once said. We saw data go in, and maps and lists come out. But what happens inside the belly of the beast? [...] more »
This post was co-written by NextDrop’s Jessica Tsai and Madhusudhan B. NextDrop, which informs residents in India via cell phone about the availability of piped water, has been fortunate enough to have the full and sincere cooperation of Chandru, one of the best valvemen in Hubli. It’s incredibly helpful to work with someone so willing [...] more »
Last month, I had the privilege of participating in the Mozilla-Knight Learning Lab. This four-week online lecture series pulled together 60 individuals interested in journalism and technology and got them to sit together watching an array of guest lecturers. The end product from each participant was a project proposal. Since it looks like I’m going [...] more »
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