Last month, Ethan Zuckerman of the Center for Future Civic Media (MIT Media Lab) posted a great article on his blog called The Tweetbomb and the Ethics of Attention (constituting Part I to this story, so make sure you read it!), in which he calls into question the practice of flooding particular users with Twitter messages to support a particular cause. The emergence of tweetbombing as a practice on Twitter is very intriguing, particularly around the assumed norms of participation. 
Too few service providers, network latency, and not enough smartphones limit the effectiveness of the Middle East's social networks... 
Thousands of college-age demonstrators marched down Mexico City's main boulevard Saturday to protest a possible return of the old ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, which held Mexico's presidency without interruption from... 
MEXICO CITY — Thousands of college-age demonstrators marched down Mexico City’s main boulevard Saturday to protest a possible return of the old ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI, which held Mexico’s presidency without... En abril de 2007, Yoani Sánchez decidió integrar el universo de la oposición en Cuba fundando su blog Generación Y. Olvidándose de la magnanimidad de las autoridades hacia ella cuando regresó a Cuba en 2004, se vuelve así una acérrima detractora del gobierno de La Habana. Sus críticas son acerbas, poco matizadas y en sentido único. Presenta un panorama apocalíptico de la realidad cubana y acusa a las autoridades de ser responsables de todos los males. Nunca evoca, ni un solo instante, el singular contexto geopolítico en el cual se encuentra Cuba desde 1959. Existen cientos de blogs en Cuba. Varios de ellos denuncian de manera incisiva algunas aberraciones de la sociedad cubana. Pero el enfoque es mucho más matizado y la información menos partidista. Pero la prensa occidental ha escogido el blog maniqueo de Sánchez. 
Super consolidation.... 
Twitter may have started off as a fun social media site for keeping up with friends and sharing updates about daily life, but it’s become much more than that for many users over the past few years as the site has evolved and grown. These days, Twitter is a powerhouse for marketing, communication, business, and even education, letting people from around the world work together, share ideas, and gain exposure. It has become a staple at many online colleges and campuses as well, leaving many academics wondering just how and if they should be using Twitter both in the classroom and in their professional lives. Via Margarita Villalba 
Networked Advocacy or net-centric advocacy refers to a specific type of advocacy. While networked advocacy has existed for centuries, it has become significantly more efficacious in recent years due in large part to the widespread availability of the internet, mobile telephones, and related communications technologies that enable users to overcome the transaction costs of collective action. 
An account of the digital underpinings of the Egyptian revolution and the activists who risked their lives to help launch it... 
Social media is a potent tool for change, one that upends the collective action dynamics that, until now, have constrained Arab citizens. 
The woman who has become the face of Chile’s student protests. 
Since Occupy Wall Street began in New York City on September 17th, the movement has spread offline to hundreds of locations around the globe. 
Slacktivism is often defined as merely a feel-good measure that requires little personal effort or sacrifice on the part of an individual that has little practical impact in actually helping the involved cause. |
Stratification by income and education levels may have dire consequences for the long-term health of civic activities like voting and volunteering, according to a new report released on Wednesday by the Educational Testing Service. 
It looks like these accounts are supporting a march against presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto. But they are actually jamming information about the protest. Thousands of demonstrators protested in Mexico City on Saturday against opposition presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto, who is far ahead in polls and poised to lead the party that ruled Mexico for much of the 20th century back to power. 
Rebecca MacKinnon urges a close attention to the particularities of time and place. Protest movements are more and more using social media, but they may stand or fall based on other factors. The last two years have seen an explosion of spreadable social movements, which have diffused virally. They have many different forms. Manuel was active in the Barcelona movement, others like Lana were active in Occupy in the USA. There are many others. Some of them are not very influential or active. Occupy Amsterdam was mostly a march. OLSX was occasionally powerful, when the labor unions participate. In the United States, we have mapped out 1000 sites. In Spain, 120. At one point, when the Spanish movement began (May 2011), one week later a map of Occupy worldwide had 850 occupations. 
Heather Brooke: Battle for the internet: In the state-orchestrated grab for cyber-territory we have to work together to ensure our online freedom is protected by law... 
Schools have always been charged with the task of producing good citizens. But how has our definition of a "good citizen" changed over the ages? 
Conservatives and liberals don't seem to agree about much, and they might not agree about recent studies linking conservatism to low intelligence and "low-effort" thinking. 
CIMA is pleased to release a new report, Digital Media in the Arab World One Year After the Revolutions, by Jeffrey Ghannam, a lawyer and writer in Washington, DC. The Arab region is experiencing a profound media shift. The year following the start... ![Why 'Slacktivists' Are More Active Than You Think [INFOGRAPHIC] | DigitalActivism | Scoop.it](http://img.scoop.it/7oEYmQOefWma5uepY_wMRjl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVaiQDB_Rd1H6kmuBWtceBJ)
Sortable created this infographic, which looks at the rise of slacktivism. 
Online movements are probably not as effective as real world engagement, but occasionally they are powerful beyond the computer. |
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