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Where Did You Put Barack Obama's Hologram?

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, April 15 2011

White House photo by Pete Souza At a Chicago fundraiser last night, President Obama had some harsh things to say about the state he found government technology in when he became president in remarks overheard and ... Read More

Axelrod Previews a Seriously Upgraded Obama '12 Digital Operation

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, April 15 2011

Team Obama has plans in the works to raise the bar it set online in '08, reports Politico's Mike Allen: President Barack Obama’s fledgling reelection campaign is building a volunteer network with the audacious ... Read More

It's Not the Announcement Video, It's the Parody of It

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, April 5 2011

Ben Smith points out that the National Republican Senatorial Committee's mocking video (above) that features Barack Obama riding a white unicorn that trails behind it a rainbow has gotten more views than Obama's ... Read More

Can Obama 2012 Bring the New Media Band Back Together Again?

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, April 4 2011

The kick-off of Barack Obama's 2012 re-election bid Monday morning came with a relaunch of BarackObama.com and a thoroughly Web-based announcement push that featured a campaign YouTube video, a text message, a Facebook ... Read More

"Are You In?": Obama Pitches 2012 as a Group Project

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, April 4 2011

And so it begins. He came by email, he came by web, he came by video, he came by text, he came by Facebook, and he came by tweet -- and, 20 months out from voting day, Barack Obama became the first officially declared ... Read More

If Obama Posts a Côte d'Ivoire Video to YouTube, Does Anyone Hear It?

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, April 1 2011

Last Friday, President Obama delivered the quick two-minute video message above on the struggle for power between Alassane Ouattara and Laurent Gbagbo in Côte d'Ivoire. "Now Côte d'Ivoire is at the crossroad, ... Read More

Obama Jokes Visitor Logs, Talks Leak Prosecution

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, March 30 2011

Earlier this week, open government advocates met with President Obama to talk open government in a 20-minute meeting that was off-the-record. Kidding! Project on Government Oversight executive director Danielle Brian ... Read More

The Most Secretest Tent in the World!

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, March 24 2011

White House photo by Pete Souza Just because it's cool. From the BBC's Rajini Vaidyanathan: A rare photo, released by the White House, shows Barack Obama fielding calls from a tent in Brazil, to keep up with events in ... Read More

Obama's Boing Boing Habit

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, March 16 2011

At last week's Gridiron Dinner, it seems, Barack Obama joked about his online reading practices "And while I know I have my share of critics out there, I don't focus on the negative stuff. I just don't pay much ... Read More

And the Award for Openness Goes to...

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, March 16 2011

President Obama's getting a transparency award today, right at the moment he's getting a swell of press for being opaque. His administration's focus has been on revamping institutional systems, but the short-term effect ... Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed thursday >

Mastercard Funding New Mobile-Based Financial Services in Kenya (Updated)

MasterCard is funding a Grameen Foundation initiative to bring financial services to the poor and the unbanked in Kenya.

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Transparency and Public Shaming: Pakistan Tackles Tax Evasion

In Pakistan, where only one in 200 citizens files their income tax return, authorities published a directory of taxpayers' details for the first time. Officials explained the decision as an attempt to shame defaulters into paying up.

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wednesday >

Facebook Seeks Approval as Financial Service in Ireland. Is the Developing World Next?

On April 13 the Financial Times reported that Facebook is only weeks away from being approved as a financial service in Ireland. Is this foray into e-money motivated by Facebook's desire to conquer the developing world before other corporate Internet giants do? Maybe.

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The Rise and Fall of Iran's “Blogestan”

The robust community of Iranian bloggers—sometimes nicknamed “Blogestan”—has shrunk since its heyday between 2002 – 2010. “Whither Blogestan,” a recent report from the University of Pennsylvania's Iran Media Program sought to find out how and why. The researchers performed a web crawling analysis of Blogestan, survey 165 Persian blog users, and conducted 20 interviews with influential bloggers in the Persian community. They found multiple causes of the decline in blogging, including increased social media use and interference from authorities.

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tuesday >

Weekly Readings: What the Govt Wants to Know

A roundup of interesting reads and stories from around the web. GO

Russia to Treat Bloggers Like Mass Media Because "the F*cking Journalists Won't Stop Writing"

The worldwide debate over who is and who isn't a journalist has raged since digital media made it much easier for citizen journalists and other “amateurs” to compete with the big guys. In the United States, journalists are entitled to certain protections under the law, such as the right to confidential sources. As such, many argue that blogging should qualify as journalism because independent writers deserve the same legal protections as corporate employees. In Russia, however, earning a place equal to mass media means additional regulations and obligations, which some say will lead to the repression of free speech.

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Politics for People: Demanding Transparent and Ethical Lobbying in the EU

Today the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) launched a campaign called Politics for People that asks candidates for the European Parliament to pledge to stand up to secretive industry lobbyists and to advocate for transparency. The Politics for People website connects voters with information about their MEP candidates and encourages them to reach out on Facebook, Twitter or by email to ask them to sign the pledge.

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monday >

Security Agencies Given Full Access to Telecom Data Even Though "All Lebanese Can Not Be Suspects"

In late March, Lebanese government ministers granted security agencies unrestricted access to telecommunications data in spite of some ministers objections that it violates privacy rights. Global Voices reports that the policy violates Lebanon's existing surveillance and privacy law, Law 140, but has gotten little coverage from the country's mainstream media.

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