Author Archives: Rebekah Heacock Jones

About Rebekah Heacock Jones

Rebekah Heacock Jones is a Senior Project Manager at the Berkman Center, where she focuses on Internet health, Internet governance, and access to information.

Internet Monitor Launches New Site, Data Platform

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Internet Monitor is delighted to announce the pilot launch of its new website, thenetmonitor.org. This new platform compiles, curates, and presents data on Internet access and controls from both the Berkman Center and a number of partners and other sources.

Internet Monitor Platform

This first version of the Internet Monitor platform contains Internet filtering data from the OpenNet Initiative, broadband data from Akamai, speed and quality data from NetIndex, crowdsourced web blockage data from Herdict, broadband pricing data from Google and Communications Chambers, and more. Internet Monitor continues to seek and integrate new sources of data in order to provide policy makers, digital activists, researchers, and user communities with an authoritative, independent, and multi-faceted set of quantitative data on the state of the global Internet; as part of our second phase of development, we’ll be incorporating both additional data and new functionality.

The platform also brings together 15 indicators on Internet access and infrastructure to create the Internet Monitor Access Index. This user-configurable index captures Internet access from several angles, including measures of Internet adoption, speed, price, and proxies for the ability of citizens to productively engage in online activity if given the opportunity: gender equality and education. Each of these four categories looks at the question of access from different but interrelated perspectives.

The site also provides easy access to Internet Monitor research publications, including our special report series and our annual report, which highlights some of the most fascinating developments and debates in the digitally networked environment each year. Our blog provides regular updates on key news and events related to Internet control and online activity around the world.

We welcome feedback on the site—including suggestions for additional data sources, bug reports, and any other thoughts you may have. Please reach out to info@thenetmonitor.org with your comments.

About Internet Monitor
Internet Monitor, based at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, is a research project to evaluate, describe, and summarize the means, mechanisms, and extent of Internet content controls and Internet activity around the world. The project compiles and curates data from multiple sources, including primary data collected by the Berkman Center and our partners, as well as relevant secondary data. The Internet Monitor platform is a freely available online fact base that gives policy makers, digital activists, researchers, and user communities an authoritative, independent, and multi-faceted set of quantitative data on the state of the global Internet. Internet Monitor also provides expert analysis on the state of the global Internet via our special report series and our annual reports on notable events and trends in the digital space.

Contact
info@thenetmonitor.org

New Internet Monitor report: “Blogs as an Alternative Public Sphere: The Role of Blogs, Mainstream Media, and TV in Russia’s Media Ecology”

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Internet Monitor is delighted to announce the publication of “Blogs as an Alternative Public Sphere: The Role of Blogs, Mainstream Media, and TV in Russia’s Media Ecology,” the third in a series of special reports that focus on key events and new developments in Internet controls and online activity.

“Blogs as an Alternative Public Sphere,” authored by Bruce Etling, Hal Roberts, and Robert Faris, uses data collected from thousands of blogs, mainstream media, and TV sources to examine the role of Russian blogs within Russia’s media ecosystem:

Applying a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, we investigate whether Russian blogs represent an alternative public sphere distinct from web-based Russian government information sources and the mainstream media. Based on data collected over a one-year period (December 2010 through December 2011) from thousands of Russian political blogs and other media sources, we compare the cosine similarity of the text from blogs, mainstream media, major TV channels, and official government websites. We find that, when discussing a selected set of major political and news topics popular during the year, blogs are consistently the least similar to government sources compared to TV and the mainstream media. We also find that the text of mainstream media outlets in Russia (primarily traditional and web-native newspapers) are more similar to government sources than one would expect given the greater editorial and financial independence of those media outlets, at least compared to largely state-controlled national TV stations. We conclude that blogs provide an alternative public sphere: a space for civic discussion and organization that differs significantly from that provided by the mainstream media, TV, and government.

The full paper is available for download at SSRN: Blogs as an Alternative Public Sphere: The Role of Blogs, Mainstream Media, and TV in Russia’s Media Ecology

About Internet Monitor
Internet Monitor is a research project to evaluate, describe, and summarize the means, mechanisms, and extent of Internet content controls and Internet activity around the world. The project will compile and curate data from multiple sources, including primary data collected by the Berkman Center and our partners, as well as relevant secondary data. Internet Monitor will create a freely available online fact base that will give policy makers, digital activists, and user communities an authoritative, independent, and multi-faceted set of quantitative data on the state of the global Internet. The project will also produce annual reports that compile this information and provide expert analysis on the state of the global Internet. The Internet Monitor is a project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. It is funded by the US Department of State and the MacArthur Foundation.

#IMWeekly: January 31, 2014

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China & Iran
Iran’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology announced this month that it is in talks with China’s Information Council about best practices for implementing a closed internal “National Information Network.”

Egypt
A new anti-terrorism law in Egypt, which will come into effect next month, enables the government to censor websites that “instigate terrorism.” Critics of the law worry that this framing could be applied to popular social media sites, including Facebook.

Netherlands
After The Hague ruled that blocking access to peer-to-peer file sharing websites such as The Pirate Bay had no measurable effect on piracy, the government of the Netherlands has decided to unblock these sites.

Russia
Mashable reports that the Russian government has ramped up surveillance in anticipation of the 2014 Winter Olympics, which begin in Sochi next Friday. The country’s System for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM) allows the Federal Security Service to access servers directly, and according to independent reports from within Russia, the government recently has been experimenting with Deep Packet Inspection as well.

2013 Internet Monitor Annual Report: “Reflections on the Digital World”

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Internet Monitor is delighted to announce the publication of Internet Monitor 2013: Reflections on the Digital World, our first-ever annual report. The report—a collection of essays from roughly two dozen experts around the world, including Ron Deibert, Malavika Jayaram, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Molly Sauter, Bruce Schneier, Ashkan Soltani, and Zeynep Tufekci, among others—highlights key events and recent trends in the digital space:

To mirror the collaborative spirit of the initiative, we compile—based on an open invitation to the members of the extended Berkman community—nearly two dozen short essays from friends, colleagues, and collaborators in the United States and abroad.

The result is intended for a general interest audience and invites reflection and discussion of the past year’s notable events and trends in the digitally networked environment. Our goal is not to describe the “state of the Internet” in any definitive way, but rather to highlight and discuss some of the most fascinating developments and debates over the past year worthy of broader public conversation.

Our contributors canvass a broad range of topics and regions—from a critique of India’s Unique Identity project to a review of corporate transparency reporting to a first-person report from the Gezi Park protests. A common thread explores how actors within government, industry, and civil society are wrestling with the changing power dynamics of the digital realm.

The full report and individual chapters are available for download on our Annual Report page.

An interactive, full text version of the report is available on H2O, where you can remix, share, excerpt, and comment on each essay: H2O: Internet Monitor 2013.

New Internet Monitor report: “Measuring Internet Activity: A (Selective) Review of Methods and Metrics”

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Internet Monitor is delighted to announce the publication of “Measuring Internet Activity: A (Selective) Review of Methods and Metrics,” the second in a series of special reports that focus on key events and new developments in Internet freedom, incorporating technical, legal, social, and political analyses.

“Measuring Internet Activity,” authored by Robert Faris and Rebekah Heacock, explores current efforts to measure digital activity within three areas: infrastructure and access, control, and content and communities:

This paper seeks to describe the conceptual and practical impediments to measuring and understanding digital activity and highlights a sample of the many efforts to fill the gap between our incomplete understanding of digital life and the formidable policy questions related to developing a vibrant and healthy Internet that serves the public interest and contributes to human wellbeing. Our primary focus is on efforts to measure Internet activity, as we believe obtaining robust, accurate data is a necessary and valuable first step that will lead us closer to answering the vitally important questions of the digital realm.

The full paper is available for download at SSRN: “Measuring Internet Activity: A (Selective) Review of Methods and Metrics”