I’ve opened a lot of lectures lately – presentations about our Media Cloud research at Berkman – by complaining about the New York Times’s Africa coverage. I cite the fact that Japan tends to average roughly 8-10 times as many mentions in the paper of record than Nigeria in any... [view entry]

Brian Lehrer, the moderator of WNYC’s excellent morning show, has been kind enough to invite me onto his show all month long, appearing every Thursday morning. It’s been a somewhat insane month for me to participate. As Rachel explained on her blog, the last few weeks of her pregnancy have... [view entry]

Warning! Professor Bowles’s lecture was rich in economic jargon, and I’m not an economist. And it had an unusally high idea density. It’s quite possible that I missed large swaths of what he was saying and misinterpreted what he did say. If something here seems obviously wrong, please use the... [view entry]

Global Voices Online Japan: In a World with Automatic Translation Wonderful Japanese blogpost on the importance of automatic translation, and the benefits of translating the apparently silly and inconsequential (tags: anguage translation blogging search japan bridgeblogs) [view entry]

Who pays for content and services on the internet? My friend Bo Peabody thinks we should be asking not just whether ad-supported journalism is feasible, but whether ad-supported social networks will work. In a Washington Post op-ed titled “Twitter.org?“, Bo leverages his experience founding and running Tripod.com to suggest that... [view entry]

My colleague Hal Roberts has been hard at work on a fascinating research question: where in the world are the websites we pay attention to? It’s an important question for his work on surveillance – if most of the popular sites for Chinese audiences are hosted in mainland China (they... [view entry]

Dan Gillmor offered an observation a few days back about the challenges of being both fast and being correct in the world of journalism, suggesting a need for “slow news“. I got an email earlier today that reminded me that it’s not just news reporting where speed can trip you... [view entry]

The Malagasy dwarf Hippo: " When Humans Don't Seem to Count" Dallaire on Rwanda and Darfur Notes on Romeo Dallaire's lecture on Rwanda, Darfur, genocide and intervention at Princeton, from Lova Rakatomalala (tags: dallaire rwanda darfur africa genocide conflict peacekeeping UN) How Skype Can Quickly and Easily Become a Social... [view entry]

There are many things I admire about my friend and colleague, David Weinberger: his intellectual curiosity, his generosity with his time and guidance, his sense of humor… One facet of David I most admire is his willingness to think in public. Most people who speak for a living (as David... [view entry]

Friend and colleague Dan Gillmor came up with a powerful idea at a Berkman retreat this past week – the need for a “slow news movement” in journalism, a focus on reporting that’s about careful, reasoned analysis, not about speed. (Dan credits the term to me – that’s too kind... [view entry]