The landscape of global online activism is constantly changing, but one lesson shows signs of being rock solid. As savvy as activists get about using the Internet, governments are going to attempt, at least, to exert some measure of control there. Iran's struggles of late have been only the most recent demonstration, where authorities there have reacted to the proliferation of web videos and protesting blog posts by sometimes throttling the nation's already skinny Internet backbones and sometimes shutting off mobile access all together.

And so, the activists attempting to thrive online could use a little help. To that end, Google and Global Voices, the Berkman Center-born organization that works with bloggers from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe (and Macedonia in between) to aggregate blog content from all over the world, have teamed up to fund the "Breaking Borders Award," a trio of grants at $10,000 a piece that goes to groups or individuals whose work "demonstrate[s] courage, energy and resourcefulness in using the Internet to promote freedom of expression."

Applications are for the award due by February 15th, 2010, and grants will go to winners in the categories of advocacy ("given to an activist or group that has used online tools to promote free expression or encourage political change"), technology, ("given to an individual or group that has created an important tool that enables free expression and expands access to information,") and policy ("given to a policy maker, government official or NGO leader who has made a notable contribution in the field.")

There is evidence that, of late, Google seems to be devoting some attention to boosting its role as an energetic (and well funded) protector of free expression. It's not always an easy fit, most particularly on the world stage. The company has in the past been criticized for contributing to a less than open Internet. As late as last June, Reporters without Borders found that search results for the 1989 violence in Tienanmen Square were filtered on Google.cn, the company's default portal within China's borders. More recently, though, the company's Senior Vice President for Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg posted a much noticed and passionate company manifesto on openness. "Open will win," wrote Rosenberg on the Google Public Policy Blog. "It will win on the Internet and will then cascade across many walks of life: The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom."

What happens when Ethan Zuckerman and Yochai Benkler put their giant brains together? Media Cloud, it seems. The new project from the Berkman Center aims to inject some actual data at the the "Is the Internet kryptonite to the news business?" debate. (Oh, those Berkman Center kids, what with their research and evidence and inductive reasoning.) Some of Berkman's driving questions mirror key questions in online politics. Are political bloggers breaking news stories or merely feeding off the decaying carcass of traditional media? Does the disaggregation of news leaving gaping holes in what we now know about corruption, legislation, and public policy? The debate about the future of political media is nearly unintelligible without answers to those questions.

Enter Media Cloud...

Andrew Rasiej and I are in Cambridge, MA today and tomorrow at the Berkman Center's "Internet Politics 2008" conference. Several techPresident contributors are here, including Gene K., Ari M., Garrett G., Chris R, and David A. and tons of friends and colleagues. The conference is semi-open in the sense that we are allowed to blog about it under the "Chatham House rule," which means that we're not supposed to name people (hence my semi-cryptic references), but that we're free to use the information shared, unless someone says something is completely off the record. Some of the conversations are being recorded and will be eventually posted to the Berkman website, however. So, consider yourself forewarned, I'm somewhat handcuffed here...