Clear Congress Project: Visualizing Real-Time Legislative Data
The Clear Congress Project by Thomas Gibes is a real-time visualization of US Congress data made available through the Sunlight Labs’ Real Time Congress API, Google News, Twitter, and other data sources. The aim of the project is to serve as a possible model for facilitating governmental transparency beyond simple data access by proposing a new format for polical news distribution.
U.S. Department of State: Secretary Clinton and Brazilian Foreign Minister To Launch Open Government Partnership on July 12
Media Note
Office of the Spokesperson Washington, DC
July 7, 2011Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota will announce the Open Government Partnership (OGP) at a high-level meeting of governments and civil society at the…
VW: The Dark Side http://www.vwdarkside.com/
NYT Crowdsources the Review of 24,000 Palin Emails
Today, the State of Alaska is set to release over 24,000 of Sarah Palin’s emails, “covering much of her tenure as governor of Alaska.” The New York Times is hoping that its readers will pitch in and help them filter this vast cache of new data on the former governor and erstwhile vice presidential candidate. Derek Willis announced the project on the Times’s Caucus blog.
“We’re asking readers to help us identify interesting and newsworthy e-mails, people and events that we may want to highlight. Interested users can fill out a simple form to describe the nature of the e-mail, and provide a name and e-mail address so we’ll know who should get the credit. Join us here on Friday afternoon and into the weekend to participate.”
France bans Twitter, Facebook mentions on TV, in the name of market competition
The words “Facebook” and “Twitter” are now verboten on French TV, because France thought it’d be a good idea to follow its own laws. Last week, the country’s Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA) ruled that TV networks and radio stations will no longer be able to explicitly mention Facebook or Twitter during on-air broadcasts, except when discussing a story in which either company is directly involved. The move comes in response to a 1992 governmental decree that prohibits media organizations from promoting brands during newscasts, for fear of diluting competition. Instead of inviting viewers to follow their programs or stories on Twitter, then, broadcast journalists will have to couch their promotions in slightly more generic terms — e.g. “Follow us on your social network of choice.” CSA spokeswoman Christine Kelly explains:
“Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition? This would be a distortion of competition. If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pandora’s Box - other social networks will complain to us saying, ‘why not us?’”
It didn’t take long for the US media to jump all over the story, with many outlets citing no less objective a source than Matthew Fraser — a Canadian expat blogger who claims, in ostensible sincerity, that the ruling is symptomatic of a “deeply rooted animosity in the French psyche toward Anglo-Saxon cultural domination.” Calling the ruling “ludicrous,” Fraser went on to flamboyantly point out the obvious, stating that such regulatory nonsense would never be tolerated by corporations in the US. But then again, neither would smelly cheese or universal healthcare. Apple, meet orange. Fueling competition via aggressive regulation may strike some free-marketeers as economically depraved, but it certainly won’t kill social media-based commerce. Facebook and Twitter have already become more or less synonymous with “social networks” anyway, so it’s hard to envision such a minor linguistic tweak having any major effect on online engagement. That’s not to say that the new regulation will suddenly create a level playing field — it won’t. But it probably won’t put America’s social media titans at a serious disadvantage, as some would have you believe. Rather, these knee-jerk arguments from Fraser and others seem more rooted in capitalist symbolism and cross-cultural hyperbole than anything else — reality, included.
Number of visits to various countries at the same point in their presidencies - two years in. Obama is on the left…
Comparing holidays by country. Social notworking: Different countries have very different standards. Which is the most (and least) slothful?
NYC: Thank you for contributing thousands of comments to help shape New York City government’s digital strategy. Today we’re excited to present our plan for NYC’s digital future, Road Map for the Digital City. Download it here.
Egyptian blogger + activist Mona Seif gives the most eloquent and clear telling of the role of social media within the media landscape that I’ve heard to date — starting at 7:40 into the audio clip.
