Information Society Watch

2007, Stephanie Wang & Shishir Nagaraja, OpenNet Initiative

This bulletin examines the emerging role of ICTs in Burma and presents a technical analysis of the Burmese military junta's complete shutdown of Internet access between September and October 2007. Using the example of Burma, it concludes that ICTs can have a major impact on global coverage of events and on the events themselves, but the effectiveness of ICTs can also be severely limited by factors such as state control.

June 7, 2007, Govtech

The global human rights organisation, Amnesty International, has launched a project in 2003 using satellite cameras to monitor highly vulnerable villages in war-torn Darfur, Sudan. The project involves encouraging ordinary people worldwide to monitor 12 villages through the Internet and put the Sudanese Government on notice that these areas are being watched around the clock. Images of the villages are being constantly updated to ensure that potentially vulnerable areas, defined according to their proximity to important resources like water supplies, threats by militias or nearby attacks, are being mapped.

June 24, 2007, Breitbart

In the strictly controlled media world of communist China, "citizen journalism" is beating a way through censorship, breaking taboos and offering a pressure valve for social tensions. In one striking example this month, the Internet was largely responsible for breaking open a slave scandal in two Chinese provinces that some local authorities had been complicit in.

June 2006, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, USA

This book is a compilation of stories of activism against the social, economic and ecological inequities arising from rapid of technological advancement. Geographically diverse cases are presented to draw out the similarities and connections between people subjected to the backlashes of technology.

May 17, 2007, Tectonic

Over 40 companies in South Africa including some leading technology majors are set to declare the impact of their operations on the environment. The effort is being spearheaded by a group of London based institutional investors with management stake in these companies who aim to assess how the operations of these companies affect the environment, in particular global warming.

September 2006, Yasmin Ibrahim, First Monday

This paper analyses how the online community in Singapore protested against the hanging of a Vietnamese drug trafficker in December 2005 and traces modes of protest against capital punishment in the quasi–authoritarian state.

June 2005, Nalaka Gunawardene, TVE Asia Pacific

This editorial urges media tycoons and typhoons (those of a tech-savvy, liberal nature confronting the corporate media) to come together. The author reminds us that when the Asian Tsunami struck, the media quickly mobilized not only to report but to help those impacted. Such media coordination needs to continue in the struggle to end poverty, under-development and corruption.

June 30, 2005, USA Today

Right from South Korea, to Germany, to the Phillipines, cell phone text messaging is becoming a new political tool for activists, what some call a "mobile democracy." Unmonitored and cheap, this means of communication acts as a means for uncensored speech.

October 2006, MoneyControl.com

Using the mapping capabilities of Google Earth, farmers in a potential Maharashtra Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in India proved the fertility of their land to authorities who were claming it uncultivable.