internet - openDemocracy (Page 44)

The NSA isn’t the only US government agency making privacy obsolete

Increasingly, the relationship between Americans and their government has come to resemble a one-way mirror dividing an interrogation room. So here’s a beginner’s guide to some of what’s happening on the other side of that mirror.

By Matthew Harwood and Christopher Calabrese

/ 24 Sep 2013

A sea of dissent: nonviolent waves in China

What are the lasting sources of discontent that are driving an increase in protest? What tactics are Chinese activists employing and how have nonviolent actors adapted in the face of severe government persecution?

By Michael Caster

/ 24 Sep 2013

Autocrats, super-tweeps and Twitter’s overnight tribes

Why people who seek to use Twitter as a measure of popularity, legitimacy or credibility should begin by blocking their fake followers.

By Rori Donaghy

/ 28 Aug 2013

Going inside, coming out

Before Chelsea Manning rebelled against the order of the US army, others had already done so—the soldiers she exposed. Their insider status has protected them whilst she has functioned as a symbolic sacrifice. Her coming out is an act of defiance.

By Jennie Kermode

/ 27 Aug 2013

The final brick in the wall of the security state?

Why the digital commentator and technology adviser this week decided to call on Obama, Cameron, Clegg and the other 'architects of oppression' to dismantle the security state, using a quote the full irony of which he is well aware.

By Bill Thompson

/ 25 Aug 2013

Totalitarianism as an object of fascination

The great public outcry and vehement criticism of American and British spy programs by western parliaments, NGOs, and the media clearly shows how great the distance still is between western democracies and the terrifying vision that Orwell described.

By Leonid Luks

/ 13 Aug 2013

Could Iran's Rouhani soon face the 'deep opposition' that Egypt's Morsi encountered?

It seems that without the role that the deep-opposition’s pessimism of the intellect played, the shallow opposition’s optimism of the will could never have claimed victory.

By Ahmad Alehossein

/ 6 Aug 2013

Commercial masters of our Voice

Once upon a time publishers sold content to readers, and readers to advertisers. This two-fold market is being destroyed by the same technology that enables writers and readers to engage with each other in ever more sophisticated ways. But, argues Tony Curzon Price, audiences that recognise their

By Tony Curzon Price

/ 26 Jul 2013

The EU becomes assertive in the Middle East peace process

The adoption of this EU directive might be the first step towards a much needed ‘paradigm shift’ that will no longer enable Israel to dismiss the EU’s voice as ‘unpleasant background noise’, the phrase used by foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor in 2012.

By Dimitris Bouris and Tobias Schumacher

/ 25 Jul 2013

A public for democracy: overcoming mediated segregation in Turkey

In this context, “Gezi”, as a synonym for all the places in Turkey where protests and citizen forums have sprung up, is not as much about solidarity as it is about the albeit tentative discovery of common-ness through the very defence of the commons.

By Britta Ohm

/ 22 Jul 2013

Between global and local: a new dialectic of political expression for the twenty-first century

Three weeks into the ongoing protests in Bulgaria, the Sofia office of the European Council on Foreign Relations invited Kerem Oktem and Dimitar Kenarov to participate in a discussion named “After Taksim: What happened in Turkey?” This is an account of the conversation that ensued on the meaning,

By Kerem Oktem, Dimitar Kenarov and Yavor Siderov

/ 22 Jul 2013

Neoliberal networks: a response to William Davies

The question of how these two disparate logics - network sociality and neoliberal competitive individualism - relate to each other is arguably the key issue in the analysis of contemporary power relations.

By Jeremy Gilbert

/ 18 Jul 2013