Helmi Noman

Internet & Democracy project release study of the Arabic blogosphere

Harvard University Berkman Center releases a major research from the Internet & Democracy project: “Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture and Dissent.”

“Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere” utilizes a unique methodology that blends link analysis, term frequency analysis, and human coding of individual blogs to investigate the online discussions taking place across the Middle East and North Africa. Internet & Democracy project director Bruce Etling and his team, with Morningside Analytics founder and Berkman affiliate John Kelly, and co-authors Robert Faris and John Palfrey, identified a base network of approximately 35,000 active blogs (about half as many as found in their previous study of the Persian blogosphere), created a network map of the 6,000 most connected blogs, and with a group of Arabic speakers hand coded 4,000 blogs. Congratulations and thanks to all who collaborated on this significant work!

The goal for the study was to produce a baseline assessment of the networked public sphere in the Arab Middle East, and its relationship to a range of emergent issues, including politics, media, religion, culture, and international affairs. Whereas the previous study of the Persian blogosphere revealed a network organized primarily around political ideologies and topical issues, such as reformist and conservative politics, religion, and poetry, the Arabic blogosphere is organized primarily around countries. Moreover, personal life and local issues are the most important topics of discussion: most bloggers write mainly personal, diary-style observations, but when writing about politics, bloggers tend to focus on issues within their own country. Bloggers link to Web 2.0 sites like YouTube and Wikipedia (English and Arabic versions) more than other sources of information and news available on the Internet. The overall picture is one of country-based groupings of blogs focused on domestic issues.

To download the paper, including the full Key Findings, or to view the map of the Arabic blogosphere, visit http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2009/Mapping_the_Arabic_Blogosphere

ONI releases the Year in Review

The OpenNet Initiative is proud to present its Year in Review: a summary of events worldwide concerning  the practices and polices of Internet filtering and surveillance.

The Summit is Now Over!

 The Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008 brought together members of the Global Voices Online citizen media project, and its wider community with a diverse group of bloggers, activists, technologists, journalists around the world, for two days of public discussions and workshops.

Image by Neha Viswanathan

 Global Voices, Global Voices Advocacy and Média Hungária hosted the Summit in Budapest, Hungary on June 27-28, 2008 with generous support from McCormick Tribune Foundation, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Google, Open Society Institute, Knight Foundation, European Journalism Centre and dotSUB.

Social Networks to connect with the Summit

OpenNet Initiative Releases Results!

The OpenNet Initiative has just released the findings of its first global study of Internet filtering at St. Anne’s College at the University of Oxford; the culmination of five years of work and the first report of its kind.  It was the first public conference on Internet filtering hosted by the ONI -- with major assistance from the staff of the Oxford Internet Institute.

After ONI Research Director Rob Faris and Principal Investigator Ron Deibert presented the data, the ONI team solicited comments and questions from the audience of over 100 human rights activists, journalists, technologists, academics.  They discussed ways in which the communities in the room and around the world could use the findings to further their own research and advocacy.

The conference also marked the launch of the new ONI website that, in addition to several new functions, will host forty country profiles, eight regional overviews, and much more.

*You can find the latest coverage of the OpenNet Initiative and their findings from the San Jose Mercury News, BBC, Businessweek, MIT Technology Review, International Herald Tribune, IT News, Slashdot, and Digg.

Access Denied

The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering
Edited by Ronald J. Deibert, John G. Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski and Jonathan Zittrain

Many countries around the world block or filter Internet content, denying access to information--often about politics, but also relating to sexuality, culture, or religion--that they deem too sensitive for ordinary citizens. Access Denied documents and analyzes Internet filtering practices in over three dozen countries, offering the first rigorously conducted study of an accelerating trend.

Internet filtering takes place in over two dozens states worldwide including many countries in Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. Related Internet content control mechanisms are also in place in Canada, the United States and a cluster of countries in Europe. Drawing on a just-completed survey of global Internet filtering undertaken by the OpenNet Initiative (a collaboration of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, and the University of Cambridge) and relying on work by regional experts and an extensive network of researchers, Access Denied examines the political, legal, social, and cultural contexts of Internet filtering in these states from a variety of perspectives. Chapters discuss the mechanisms and politics of Internet filtering, the strengths and limitations of the technology that powers it, the relevance of international law, ethical considerations for corporations that supply states with the tools for blocking and filtering, and the implications of Internet filtering for activist communities that increasingly rely on Internet technologies for communicating their missions.

Reports on Internet content regulation in forty different countries follow, with each country profile outlining the types of content blocked by category and documenting key findings.

Contributors:
Ross Anderson, Malcolm Birdling, Ronald Deibert, Robert Faris, Vesselina Haralampieva, Steven Murdoch, Helmi Noman, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, Mary Rundle, Nart Villeneuve, Stephanie Wang, and Jonathan Zittrain

Ronald Deibert is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for Internet Studies, University of Toronto.

John Palfrey is Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Rafal Rohozinski is a Research Fellow of the Cambridge Security Program and Director of the Advanced Network Research Group at Cambridge University.

Jonathan Zittrain is Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University and Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Visiting Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School.

• MIT Press, November 2007
• Order a copy of this book