Internet & Democracy Blog

Here in Cambridge the days are growing shorter, the temperature cooler, and tens of thousands of students have descended on the Boston area for the start of another school year. In that spirit, I’d like to share our research plans for this fall here at the Internet and Democracy Project.

We have completed a number of case studies that we will release in the coming weeks. This includes an analysis of the impact of the site Ushahidi, blogs, and SMS on post-election violence in Kenya. Second, we will release a case study on last year’s largely Internet driven protests in Burma, which ultimately failed to lead to political change but whose long term impact remains unclear and debatable. Third, a series of three cases by Urs Gasser and his team at St. Gallen University on the the impact of the SmartVote project, E-Voting, and politicians’ blogs in Switzerland.

We have also been busy this past summer with research into both the Arabic and Russian blogospheres. This work follows our groundbreaking case study with our friend John Kelly on the Iranian blogosphere, which we have translated into Persian and will share in the next week or so. We will participate in a Harriman Institute event at Columbia in October to discuss the Russian blog research, and also plan to release case studies on both Arabic and Russian blogs before the end of fall. Look for sneak peeks here on the blog.

Of course, we will continue to blog frequently and welcome and encourage feedback, news, and contributions from readers that are already doing great work in this zone. You can always access all of our case studies either in the publications box on the right hand side of this blog, as well as the the publications section of the Berkman Center Web site.

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