The Berkman Center for Internet & Society has a number of projects looking for Russian speakers and area experts to contribute to our research agenda on filtering, blogs, new media and the Internet in Russia. Specifically, we are looking for a Russian lawyer or law student (a Harvard LLM or JD student would be ideal) with knowledge of media and/or Internet law in Russia to write an analysis of the legal framework that governs the Internet, new media, censorship and freedom of speech in Russia. We hope to have this project completed in the Fall 2009 term. To see a short example of the type of legal analysis we are looking for see the legal sections of the recent ONI survey of filtering in the Middle East.
We also welcome resumes and expressions of interest from Russian speakers with expertise in other fields of study, including computer developers, to contribute to our analysis of the Russian Internet. Projects you could work on include mapping and content analysis of the Russian blogosphere and development of Russian Media Cloud, an online news aggregation and analysis tool. To learn more about media cloud see this recent New York Times article or the media cloud Web site. To see examples of foreign language blog research see our recent study of the Arabic blogosphere.
To apply, please email a cover letter and a resume to Bruce Etling.