Category: Autonomous Internet

Do “Liberation Technologies” Change the Balance of Power Between Repressive Regimes and Civil Society?

My dissertation is now available for download. Many thanks to my dissertation committee for their support and feedback throughout: Professor Dan Drezner, Professor Larry Diamond, Professor Carolyn Gideon and Clay Shirky. This dissertation is dedicated to Khaled Mohamed Saeed and Mohamed Bouazizi.

Abstract

Do new information and communication technologies (ICTs) empower repressive regimes at the expense of civil society, or vice versa? For example, does access to the Internet and mobile phones alter the balance of power between repressive regimes and civil society? These questions are especially pertinent today given the role that ICTs played during this year’s uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and beyond. Indeed, as one Egyptian activist stated, “We use Facebook to schedule our protests, Twitter to coordinate and YouTube to tell the world.” But do these new ICTs—so called “liberation technologies”—really threaten repressive rule? The purpose of this dissertation is to use mixed-methods research to answer these questions.

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: PhD on Liberation Technology Impact”

OccupyData Hackathon.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

LOS ANGELES, October 26, 2011- 3 Days, 30 Twitter hashtags, and countless ways to understand the occupy movement. From 09 December 2011 to 11 December 2011, R-Shief, a lab that collects and analyzes Middle East content from the Internet, will hold its first hackathon with satellite locations throughout the world. The aim of this event is to give activists data collected from Twitter, as well as R-Shief’s machine learning analytics, in a collective effort to offer a public and shared repository for data and visualizations about the Occupy Movements.

In solidarity with protestors around the world, #OccupyData is meant to serve as an intervention by offering experts and activists means to work together and think critically about the movement, its messages, and goals. Register and receive open access to export four CSV files for each hashtag — (1) stats by day, (2) stats by hour (3) stats by minute and the (4) raw data itself. (These files are automatically updated hourly). We encourage all participants to post links or images of the work that comes out of this to R-Shief’s blog رشيف | Blog or Visualize It section رشيف | Data Visualizations. Reports from this event will also be featured in Jadaliyya.

Register @ R-Shief | #OccupyData

Live graphs @ R-Shief Twitterminer

Phi Beta Iota:  The Occupy movement is very rapidly developing alternative forms of command, control, communication, computing, and intelligence (C4I), and the Autonomous Internet as well as real-time data sharing and sense-making are high on the priority list.  Occupy is a new Republic emergent – a new form of direct democracy that will evolve by creating its own tools, its own culture, its own forms of money and social business.  US Occupy is in alignment with international Occupy, and cross-fertilization is occuring with astonishing clarity, diversity, and integrity.  This is a sustainable revolution that will be global in nature.  It will define the 21st Century.  That is a good thing.