Tonight’s debate on CNN for the Democratic presidential hopefuls was a big step forward for the way campaigns are covered. The producers deserve a lot of credit for the innovative format they introduced. The videos they chose were terrific: authentic(-seeming, anyway) voices from ordinary voters speaking directly to candidates. The final video, about “the candidate … Read more
Prof. Sunshine Hillygus is presenting about her study of the persuadable voter here at SDP 2007. She has a book coming out with Princeton University Press shortly on her research. I asked her what the most surprising/biggest finding of her book is. She said that she is trying to get away from the question of … Read more
One of the most provocative themes from yesterday’s ONI conference is captured by Prof. Dr. Urs Gasser in his blog: is there such a thing as best practices for technical Internet filtering? Richard Clayton said emphatically not; others seemed intrigued.
We’re gearing up this week to host our first big Internet filtering conference this week, which is already oversubscribed. The event is taking place in Oxford, England, hosted by our partners at the Oxford Internet Institute, in cooperation with our other partners at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and the University of Cambridge’s Advanced … Read more
The OpenNet Initiative ran a series of tests related to Internet access during the recent elections in Nigeria. Though the election was fraught with issues generally, and though certain web sites were inaccessible during key moments of the election period, we found no evidence of tampering with the Internet. We’re in the process of refining … Read more
As part of our first-ever OpenNet Initiative conference in May, we are participating in a debate at the Oxford Union. The resolution is: “This House believes that the Internet is the greatest force for Democratisation in the World.”
In preparation for the final class of the semester in Internet, Law and Politics 2007 at Harvard Law School, I am posting a draft of the core themes of the course to the class wiki. Comments, as always, most welcome. * * * Internet Law and Politics, 2007: Themes of the Course – The puzzle … Read more
Prof. Eric von Hippel has written one of my favorite books: Democratizing Innovation. Prof. von Hippel teaches at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and runs the Innovation Lab there. Our class of Harvard Law School students focused on Internet, Law and Politics have created a wiki page of questions for Prof. von Hippel in advance … Read more
Students in the HLS course Internet, Law and Politics are staging a debate today. The two sides of the argument are posted to the course wiki. The overall debate page is here, including today’s resolution: “Resolved: The Internet enables citizens to have a greater voice in politics and is, on balance, already a tremendous force … Read more
Today, in Internet, Law, and Politics at Harvard Law School, we’re taking up some counter-arguments to the strong form of the argument that Internet can transform politics. I’m building a short outline of some of the key concerns, here, as I prepare for class. It occurs to me to point out that there’s a wonderful … Read more