New York Times: Top Universities Join to Push ‘Public Interest Technology’. “As technology becomes increasingly pervasive in American life, universities across the United States have been devising ways to teach students how to grapple with the consequences on society. Now, 21 leading universities are banding together to promote their various programs. On Monday, the schools announced that they had formed a new organization called the Public Interest Technology University Network.”
social change
Digital Preservation Coalition: Together for Yes archive to be preserved in Digital Repository of Ireland
Digital Preservation Coalition: Together for Yes archive to be preserved in Digital Repository of Ireland. “The campaign, which was active during the months leading up to the referendum on the Eighth Amendment in May 2018, was the main civil society organisation advocating for a Yes vote. During its existence, Together For Yes generated a huge amount of digital content, including campaign branding, an official website, press releases, merchandise design and more. As part of its post-referendum work, Together for Yes organised a preservation and archiving initiative, of which membership of a trusted digital repository plays a key part. An archivist will work on ingesting the campaign’s public digital record as well as some business records and other materials.”
University of Iowa: Rare Recordings of Civil Rights Activists Available Now
University of Iowa: Rare Recordings of Civil Rights Activists Available Now. “In 1963 and 1964, attorney Bob Zellner recorded a series of interviews with civil rights activists in Mississippi and Alabama. Zellner conducted the interviews on behalf of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in an effort to document the activists’ experiences, which were often under challenging and violent circumstances. The interviewees participated in the Mississippi Summer Project in 1964, later to be known as Freedom Summer, a drive to register African Americans in the Magnolia State to vote. For decades, attempts by blacks to register at county court houses across the state were met with intimidation, harassment, and even violence. Freedom Summer was an organized response to this situation, with activists from across the U.S. participating, including over 800 college and university students. Among them were about a dozen students from the University of Iowa.”
New Delhi Times: Zimbabwe Activists Push Back on Social Media Restrictions
New Delhi Times: Zimbabwe Activists Push Back on Social Media Restrictions. “In Zimbabwe, rights and opposition groups are surviving by using social media to communicate with the masses as state-owned media remain reserved for ruling party officials. During recent anti-government protests, the public received information through social media and now the government wants a law to block such platforms.”
Futuris: archiving popular dissent against communism (Euronews)
Euronews: Futuris: archiving popular dissent against communism. “A new European research project is working to preserve historical material related to cultural resistance from the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. But how are they achieving that?”
TechCrunch: Facebook launches petition feature, its next battlefield
TechCrunch: Facebook launches petition feature, its next battlefield . “Gather a mob and Facebook will now let you make political demands. Tomorrow [Monday, January 21] Facebook will encounter a slew of fresh complexities with the launch of Community Actions, its News Feed petition feature. Community Actions could unite neighbors to request change from their local and national elected officials and government agencies. But it could also provide vocal interest groups a bully pulpit from which to pressure politicians and bureaucrats with their fringe agendas.”
Slate: Practice Hacktivism at Your Own Risk
Slate: Practice Hacktivism at Your Own Risk. “People launch cyberattacks for all sorts of different reasons—to steal money, to steal secrets, to show off their skills, to wreak havoc, but also for (what they consider to be) altruistic reasons. Martin Gottesfeld did it to draw attention to the case of Justina Pelletier, a Connecticut teenager who was admitted to Boston Children’s Hospital in 2013 and kept in a psychiatric ward there, against her parents’ wishes, for more than a year. Pelletier was ultimately returned to her family, but before that, Gottesfeld launched distributed denial-of-service attacks on two Massachusetts medical facilities involved in Pelletier’s care.”
