Berkman Buzz: Week of June 29, 2009

July 02, 2009

BERKMAN BUZZ:  A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations.  If you'd like to receive this by email, sign up here.

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*Dan Gillmor: "When the Follow-Up Compounds the Problem"
*Internet & Democracy Project: "Presidential Election in Indonesia"
*Ethan Zuckerman: "Which coups count?"
*Citizen Media Law Project: "News Websites in Texas and Kentucky Invoke Shield Laws for Online Commenters"
*Stephen Schultze: "Radio Moon Bounce"
*Doc Searls: "Beyond celebrity obsession"
*Weekly Global Voices: "Kazakhstan: State-ordered blogging"

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"Inadequate journalism often leads to worse journalism. A case in point is Wired.com’s follow-up on a dubious Wall Street Journal story about alleged 'deep packet inspection' (DPI) — an invasive digital surveillance method — on Iran’s mobile-Internet users..."
From Dan Gillmor's blog post, "When the Follow-Up Compounds the Problem"

"The summer months of 2009 have already played host to game-changing elections in the world’s largest Hindu and Shiite Muslim nations, India and Iran respectively. On July 8, Indonesia – the world’s fourth-largest by-population nation, the world’s largest Muslim country as well as largest Muslim democracy– will hold its presidential elections..."
From the Internet & Democracy Project blog post, "Presidential Election in Indonesia"

"There are countless ways to screw up a fragile democracy. Two aspects of the democratic process seem to be especially vulnerable - elections, and term limits. Recent events in Iran have reminded us that elections are surprisingly easy to rig if you’ve got adequate control of electoral commissions..."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post, "Which coups count?"

"This week brings word of two new cases testing whether state shield laws apply to user comments posted on news websites.  In Texas, a Taylor County District Court judge ruled that the Abilene Reporter-News may refrain from disclosing the identities of commenters who posted comments to articles about a murder victim and the teenager charged in connection with his death..."
From Sam Bayard's blog post for the Citizen Media Law Project, "News Websites in Texas and Kentucky Invoke Shield Laws for Online Commenters"

"Everybody loves a good moon bounce. Today's moon bounce didn't involve taking your shoes off and jumping, but it was every bit as fun (if you are a geek). Every so often, when the moon is in the right spot, amateur radio operators ('hams') organize a competition to see who can communicate with the most people across the world by bouncing signals off of the moon..."
From Stephen Schultze blog post, "Radio Moon Bounce"

"I wish to discuss an idea here. It’s an idea about celebrity, and it follows an event that has become a black hole in nearly all media: the death of Michael Jackson. According to Don Norman, a black hole topic is one that is essentially undiscussable: 'Drop the subject into the middle of a room and it sucks everybody into a useless place from which no light can escape...'"
From Doc Searls' blog post, "Beyond celebrity obsession"

"rOOse, a blogger on the YVision.kz blog platform in Kazakhstan, has posted [ru] a letter from the government to the principals of schools and colleges across the country containing recommendations to upload videos to the KazTube.Kz video portal, which was created in February 2009 at the expense of the state budget. In particular, the principals are urged to post videos about 'significant events taking place in their institutions on a regular basis...'"
From Yelena Jetpyspayeva's blog post for Global Voices, "Kazakhstan: State-ordered blogging"