I’ve recently been thinking and writing about digital activism research research methodologies and better ways of creating knowledge.  Towards that end, here’s a simple standard for research and knowledge creation in the digital age: Open Process: crowdsourcing, resource-sharing, collaboration, publishing raw data and in-process versions of analysis, transparent methodology Open Product: publication (of data and [...]

In my last post I vented some frustration about the inefficiencies of academia: how current standards for intellectual property, peer review, and tenure are actually limiting academia’s avowed goal of creating and disseminating knowledge, not only in the field of digital activism, but in others as well. In this post I’d like to dig into [...]

Last week Stanford put on a conference called Mobile Health 2011.  Here’s a reflection from Craig Lefebvre, one of the organizers, which sounded very familiar: Few of the presentations were data-driven, many were anecdotal, and perhaps more maddening were the number of academicians there who said to me “Oh, I have some data under review [...]

When I first became interested in digital activism in 2004-5  I was convinced it was an entirely new phenomenon.  The longer I’ve studied it the more I’ve become convinced that understanding digital activism means having a foundation in a variety of related fields, most of them relating to the “activism” rather than the “digital.” I’ve [...]

Reading “The Net Delusion” has got me thinking about how we define successful digital activism and digital repression in authoritarian regimes and how traditional definitions of success favor authoritarians. The easiest way to define a campaign, tactic, or movement as successful is by asking “did it achieve its stated goal?”. Campaigns aim to alter the [...]

Patrick Meier, a fellow at Stanford, has shared a draft the literature review for his doctoral thesis, “Do ‘Liberation Technologies’ Change the Balance of Power Between Repressive Regimes and Civil Society?”.  Though the loaded term “liberation technology” implies a certain bias in how that question will be answered, it is an important one: do information [...]

When I worked in the Obama campaign’s new media department, one practice I particularly admired was the reliance on data in decision making.  Which title should we use for this fundraising email?  Run a test where one randomized group gets one title, one randomized group gets another title, and see which group donates more.   Where [...]

… or so I just learned from the Berkman Center’s lovely new infographic (left), which accompanies their first report in a series on Russian Internet society: “Public Discourse in the Russian Blogosphere: Mapping RuNet Politics and Mobilization” (PDF).  There’s also a nice post on the Berkman blog explaining the key findings, which include: Russian bloggers [...]

Though the title is a bit silly, “Blogs and Bullets: New Media in Contentious Politics” (PDF), published by the United States Institute of Peace, is the best analysis I’ve read so far on digital activism research.  It takes a broad view, correctly diagnosing the current state of the field and making astute recommendations about methodology [...]

Technology for Transparency is a Global Voices project to map and evaluate technology projects that promote transparency, accountability, and civic engagement around the world.  Recently the project’s co-directors, Rebekah Heacock and Renata Avila, wrote a post about lessons learned from the 37 case studies they’ve published so far.  It’s a commentary not only on tech for transparency, [...]