Pesadilla en el T�bet

Ricardo Roman — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 17:57:49 -0400

Una buena cosa que El Mercurio informe de la pesadilla que vive el Tibet: Mientras China intensifica la represi�n sobre los tibetanos, los seguidores del Dalai Lama resisten, como lo hacen desde hace 58 a�os. aqu�, un periodista del the New York Times se sumerge en el largo conflicto, mientras la fot�grafa chilena M�nica Oportot muestra el otro T�bet, el de los exiliados en india. Muchas fotos

Zarkozy Boicotea JJOO sin China no dialoga con Tibet

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An Internet & Democracy Framework: Information > Deliberation > Participation

Mary — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 02:18:00 -0300

One of our tasks at the Internet and Democracy Project is to develop an intellectual framework which will aid us in studying the effect of the Internet on democracy. We are beginning by doing a lot of background research on the scholarship of democracy: Juan Linz, Seymour Martin Lipset, Terry Lynn Karl, Joseph Schumpeter, Robert Dahl, Larry Diamond. This has been very useful in placing our own research within the context of previous democracy research. Our next step is to do an overview of previous theories of democracy and the Internet, which fellow Corinna di

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Free Burna

Ricardo Roman — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 22:33:00 -0400

Free Burna

Morocco's Sad Sad Election

Mary — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:16:35 -0400

Moroccan democracy is a cause that is near and dear to my heart. I spent the academic year of 2004-2005 in Rabat as a Fulbright scholar studying democratization. Pretty early on, I realized that Moroccan democratization was a fraud, but I was really inspired by the passionate work of Moroccan grassroots activists, which led to my current passion for digital activism.

nice Al-Jazeera English analysis of the election

Unfortunately, the recent parliamentary elections on September 7th were pretty sad. I don't say that they were "disappointing" because it was really a surprise that the respected Islamist PJD party came in

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Political Equals

Mary — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 23:55:00 -0400

Today was my first day of class at the Kennedy School and, not surprisingly, one of my readings for tomorrow has inspired me. (Part of the reasons I was looking forward to starting grad school was to have more blogging fodder.)

For my class in comparative politics, I was assigned a piece of Robert A. Dahl's 1971 book Polyarchy:Participation and Opposition, specifically, a section on democratization. One throw-away comment that Dahl makes that I really like is that citizens in a democracy are "political equals." I really like this formulation of equality and I think it clarifies the impact

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An Introduction to Semiotic Democracy

Mary — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:46:19 -0400

Note: The idea of semiotic democracy - the collaborative public definition of cultural signs (semeîon in Greek) - is gaining popularity, particularly as it applies the the Internet. Here's a passage on semiotic democracy from my case study on the citizen journalism web site OhmyNews. Please feel free to correct my interpretations.

Citizen reporters take part in the semiotic process of creating meaning within a culture. They cease to be a passive audience for the culture products which reflect the priorities of others and instead create their own cultural products which reflect their own priorities. Given wide enough

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OhmyNews Case Study: The Super-Short Version

Mary — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:05:55 -0400

Note: In June I was hired by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society to write a case study about the effect that the Korean citizen journalism site OhmyNews has had on democracy in that country. I finished the first draft of the report last week. This is the executive summary.

Ever since Tom Paine wrote "Common Sense" in 1776, citizen journalism has been strengthening democracy. By providing an alternative to mainstream media in both content and perspective, citizen journalism keeps people better informed about public issues, allowing them to more intelligently form opinions about public policy and select

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Taking Back the Internet

Mary — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 13:06:00 -0400

Most of the Internet is like a village square where the rich come to sell you something and the powerful come to remind you who is boss. The rich don't expect you to interact with them and they don't want you to interact with them unless it will somehow encourage you to buy more. The powerful don't expect you to interact with them and they don't want you to interact with you unless it will somehow encourage you to be more obedient.

We have accepted that we can't talk back to the rich and powerful. But that is a lie.

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The Rayt Manifesto

Mary — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 18:06:56 -0400

Why the World Needs Rayt

The reason I developed the idea for Rayt is because Web 2.0 does not exist. We don't have Web 2.0, we have web sites 2.0. Some sites - like del.icio.us, Digg, and Wikipedia - allow users to interact and create contents, but most websites merely

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Q: Who is your Congressman working for?

Mary — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 19:50:18 -0400

A: Your Congressman is working for special interests and elections are the reason.

We Americans are pretty proud of our democracy. While we didn't exactly invent the thing (that would the ancient Greeks and then the French philosophes), we are the first country in the modern world with an elected executive. We are so proud of our democracy that we've even tried to spread it to other countries, usually with mixed results. Still, a lot of what makes Americans patriotic about their country is their democracy, and we don't tend to be too critical of it.

Last Saturday I saw

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