What do Time Out magazine, Al Jazeera, Penthouse and the Muslim Brotherhood all have in common? Their websites were all blocked this weekend by the Jordan government for failing to register for a license.

If Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to be believed, ongoing protests in Istanbul are thanks in no small part to lies and exaggerations spreading online. "There is now a menace which is called Twitter," Erdogan said on TV, according to the Guardian. "The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society." While some have suggested that Erdogan has cracked down on Internet access in response, there's no evidence his government has limited connectivity. In fact, initial research suggests that the Turkish protests have spawned a record number of Tweets compared with other protests, spreading not just real-time information about protests, but encouraging others to participate. The uncomfortable truth is that while it's unsurprising to hear a government official denouncing his detractors as misinformed or dishonest, Erdogan isn't entirely wrong. Unverified and in some cases clearly inaccurate information about the protests is spreading fast, and in some cases too rapidly for reliable information to counteract. Read More

While comparisons between what is happening in Istanbul now and what happened in Cairo's Tahrir Square between January and February 2011 are perhaps inevitable, they are most definitely not accurate. This is not a Turkish spring, although it might be the Turkish version of the Occupy movement. But Turkey is not Egypt and Erdogan is no Mubarak. Prime Minister Erdogan has been elected three times by popular vote and Turkey is a democracy with an ostensibly free press. How, then, to explain the near-farcical failure of the Turkish media to cover the largest spontaneous demonstrations in the country's recent history? Read More

By mapping an 1854 cholera outbreak in London, Doctor John Snow changed epidemiology forever. He discovered the source of contamination was in the water from a pump on Broad Street, not from 'bad air' as previously believed. He also pioneered the field of data journalism and data visualizations, now a staple for public health organizations. In Pakistan, data collected on smartphones by city employees has been mapped and used to target sources of the potentially deadly dengue fever and is possibly keeping infection and mortality rates down. The same technology was repurposed to combat corruption in the Pakistan election this May.

As of June 1st, some online sources for Singapore news need an individual license from the government media regulator, the Media Development Authority (MDA). Online news sites are already subject to the Internet Code of Practice, which includes a description of “Prohibited Material.” However, the new License specifies that news sites must remove prohibited content within 24 hours of notification from the MDA.