If there is one piece of discourse I would love to retire from the public sphere, it is the “There is no such thing as a Facebook revolution” column. Internet skeptics get more mileage out of this straw man argument than Honda Civic owners get out of their cars. The latest entry is the New [...]

Last week I had the privilege to interview Abdullah Al-Fakharany, a Cairo-based citizen journalist who helps run something called Rassd News Network (RNN). Rassd is an Egyptian Arabic acronym for Raqib (observe), Sower (photograph), Dowin (write). RNN, as it is known in Egypt and across the Arab world, began as a joint voluntary effort in [...]

[UPDATED] Are America’s information interventions around the world just imperialism in a digital mask or is a different type of foreign policy at work?  In an interesting post today on the Savage Minds blog Adam Fish, a PhD candidate at UCLA, writes: By the end of the year the US State department will spend $70 [...]

In Egypt today we are seeing the continuing digital saga of authoritarian governments vs. civil society activists.  Egypt is a country with an extremely strong digital civil society, including high mobile phone penetration, an active blogosphere, and a history of Facebook campaigns that achieve real-world results, such as the 2008 General Strike and the “We [...]

In a world of insta-analysis that demands predictions, many commentators looked at the Tunisian revolution and argued that it was an isolated affair, and that structural factors would prevent the rest of the Arab states from suffering similar fates. In a particularly incoherent article containing some gobbledygook about the Roman Empire in the New York [...]

“All roads lead to Rome”: in antiquity centrality was a measure of power. The power of Rome, the global empire of its time, was both revealed and reinforced by its ability to make itself the center of that world. But the new infrastructure of the digital age flouts centrality. On the Internet, which has no [...]

While at home in New Jersey for the Christmas holiday I happened to pick up my Mom’s copy of Archaeology magazine and read an article on an exhibition of monumental Olmec sculptures.  The heads, which were created 1400-400 BC, depict the faces of the Mexican civilization’s rulers. Why create such large representations of power?  Because [...]

Is Pepsi Refresh – the marketing campaign which leverages social media to give grants to non-profit projects – an example of digital activism?  The campaign is certainly digital.  Grant ideas are submitted through a web site, www.refresheverything.com, which is also where supporters come to vote on which ideas will win funds. Pepsi Refresh is also [...]

Talking about the digital divide is a bit passé. It was once a major issue. According to digital policy expert Sonia Arrison, in the late nineties “the Rev. Jesse Jackson called the digital divide ‘classic apartheid,’ the NAACP’s Kweisi Mfume dubbed it ‘technological segregation,’ and President Clinton urged a ‘national crusade’.” International institutions funded programs [...]

At the Guardian Activate Summit last month, social media entrepreneur Gaurav Mishra (full disclosure: we dated) argued that there are two digital activism paradigms: information and inspiration: In the first paradigm of digital activism, you work with a disadvantaged group that suffers from limited access to even the most basic information and tools for self-expression. [...]