Personal Democracy Plus Our premium content network. LEARN MORE You are not logged in. LOG IN NOW >

The Europe Roundup: Apps4Germany

BY Antonella Napolitano | Monday, July 18 2011

Germany | Apps4Germany Open Data in Germany takes a further step with the launch of a national competition called "Apps für Deutschland" (Apps for Germany). Apps4De is set to "open up the public sector", as explained ... Read More

The Europe Roundup: Why are Political Blogs Dominated by Men?

BY Antonella Napolitano | Thursday, July 14 2011

UK | Why are political blogs dominated by men The Hansard Society has a new report out entitled "Gender And Digital Politics" in which the three authors examine the question: “Why are political blogs dominated by ... Read More

The Europe Roundup: Social Networks and Voting in Italy: is There New Evidence?

BY Antonella Napolitano | Friday, July 8 2011

Italy | Social Networks and Voting in Italy: is There New Evidence? In the past two months Italy has faced a round of elections  – two administrative ballots and a referendum day – which have been unanimously ... Read More

The Europe roundup: Petition Your Council. Easily.

BY Antonella Napolitano | Wednesday, July 6 2011

UK | Petition Your Council. Easily. Yesterday mySociety.org launched a new project called PetitionYourCouncil.com: the website has been built to make it easy to petition your local council using their official online ... Read More

The Europe Roundup: The Danger of Transparency

BY Antonella Napolitano | Wednesday, June 29 2011

Slovakia | The danger of transparency A couple of weeks ago the winners of the Open Data Challenge were announced at the First Digital Agenda Assembly in Brussels. Best in the application category was ZNasichDani.sk ... Read More

UK Home Office Considers Mapping Faces of Criminals

BY Nick Judd | Monday, June 27 2011

The United Kingdom's Police.uk crime mapping website may be expanded to include photographs of offenders and more details about their offences, the BBC reported Sunday. The BBC gave a tip of the hat to the Sunday Times, ... Read More

The Europe roundup: Europe gets geeks - does it, really?

BY Antonella Napolitano | Tuesday, June 21 2011

EU | Europe gets geeks - does it, really? The Digital Agenda Assembly concluded its works last week gathering 1300 people from over Europe to discuss the key points of the Digital Agenda, the EU strategy for the digital ... Read More

The Europe Roundup: MySociety.org Evaluation Reports

BY Antonella Napolitano | Friday, June 17 2011

UK | mySociety.org evaluation reports After years of successful projects aimed at raising civic awareness, mySociety.org commissioned a detailed analysis of two of its most successful projects, TheyWorkForYou and ... Read More

Think Globally, Tweet Locally: British Town Council In Midst of 24 Hours of Tweets

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, March 3 2011

Boring but important: The Walsall Town Council took to Twitter March 24 to explain its value to citizens, 140 characters at a time. One of the weirdly great things about the rising significance of the Internet in daily ... Read More

British Austerity Battle Takes Up "Facts on Fees"

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, December 10 2010

Tories in the British government are rather chuffed with the response to their online campaign called "Fact on Fees," an attempt to push the conservative take on tuition increases for universities in the UK. Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed wednesday >

Another Co-Opted Hashtag: #MustSeeIran

The Twitter hashtag #MustSeeIran was created to showcase Iran's architecture, landscapes, and would-be tourist destinations. It was then co-opted by activists to bring attention to human rights abuses and infringements. Now Twitter is home to two starkly different portraits of a country. GO

What Has the EU Ever Done For Us?: Countering Euroskepticism with Viral Videos and Monty Python

Ahead of the May 25 European Elections, the most intense campaigning may not be by the candidates or the political parties. Instead, some of the most passionate campaigns are more grassroots efforts focused on for a start stirring up the interest of the European electorate. GO

At NETmundial Brazil: Is "Multistakeholderism" Good for the Internet?

Today and tomorrow Brazil is hosting NETmundial, a global multi-stakeholder meeting on the future of Internet governance. GO

Brazilian President Signs Internet Bill of Rights Into Law at NetMundial

Earlier today Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff sanctioned Marco Civil, also called the Internet bill of rights, during the global Internet governance event, NetMundial, in Brazil.

GO

tuesday >

Ruck.us Reboots As a Candidate Digital Toolkit That's a Bit Too Like Democracy.com

Ruck.us launched with big ambitions and star appeal, hoping to crack the code on how to get millions of people to pool their political passions through their platform. When that ambition stalled, its founder Nathan Daschle--son of the former Senator--decided to pivot to offering political candidates an easy-to-use free web platform for organizing and fundraising. Now the new Ruck.us is out from stealth mode, entering a field already being served by competitors like NationBuilder, Salsa Labs and Democracy.com. And strangely enough, Ruck.us seems to want its early users to ask Democracy.com for help. GO

Armenian Legislators: You Can Be As Anonymous on the 'Net As You Like—Until You Can't

A proposed bill in Armenia would make it illegal for media outlets to include defamatory remarks by anonymous or fake sources, and require sites to remove libelous comments within 12 hours unless they identify the author.

GO

Founder Durov On Being Ousted From "Russian Facebook": "Some of What We Managed Is Already Impossible to Undo"

On Monday Pavel Durov, the founder of “Russian Facebook” VKontakte, announced that he was fired—and that he learned of the dismissal from the news media.

GO

monday >

The Good Wife Looks for the Next Snowden and Outwits the NSA

Even as the real Edward Snowden faces questions over his motives in Russia, another side of his legacy played out for the over nine million viewers of last night's The Good Wife, which concluded its season long storyline exploring NSA surveillance. In the episode titled All Tapped Out, one young NSA worker's legal concerns lead him to becoming a whistle-blower, setting off a chain of events that allows the main character, lawyer Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies), and her husband, Illinois Governor Peter Florrick (Chris Noth), to turn the tables on the NSA using its own methods. GO

The Expanding Reach of China's Crowdsourced Environmental Monitoring Site, Danger Maps

Last week billionaire businessman Jack Ma, founder of the e-commerce company Alibaba, appealed to his “500 million-strong army” of consumers to help monitor water quality in China. Inexpensive testing kits sold through his company can be used to measure pH, phosphates, ammonia, and heavy metal levels, and then the data can be uploaded via smartphone to the environmental monitoring site Danger Maps. Although the initiative will push the Chinese authorities' tolerance for civic engagement and activism, Ethan Zuckerman has high hopes for “monitorial citizenship” in China.

GO

The 13 Worst Bits of Russia's Current and Maybe Future Internet Legislation

It appears that Russia is on the brink of passing still more repressive Internet regulations. A new telecommunications bill that would require popular blogs—those with 3,000 or more visits a day—to join a government registry and conform to government-mandated standards is expected to pass this week. What follows is a list of the worst bits of both proposed and existing Russian Internet law. Let us know in the comments or on Twitter if we missed anything.

GO

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.

GO

More