Berkman Buzz: Week of November 2, 2009

BERKMAN BUZZ: A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations
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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.

* Ethan Zuckerman asks what you know about Fiji.
* Doc Searls thinks of the Huffington Post as a primitive sponge.
* The CMLP on satire, parody, pranks, Yes Men.
* Harry Lewis is sobered by what he's told Google.
* Andrew McAfee promises to be less shameless in future posts.
* Weekly Global Voices: "Brazil: A view from slum dwellers on Rio's drugs war"
* A year ago in the Buzz: "Campaigns Differ in Approach to Political Blogosphere"

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The full buzz.

"What do you know about Fiji? Before getting involved with Global Voices, I knew that it was an island paradise somewhere in the South Pacific much beloved by vacationers and honeymooners and that, despite being an island nation surrounded by seawater, they export a lot of high-priced bottled water. As I’ve followed Michael Hartsell’s reporting on Fiji on Global Voices, I’ve gotten a very different impression of the nation. The tensions between ethnic Fijians and Indo-Fijians have divided the nation politically, leading to rewritings of the constitution and severe government instability. Fiji has had four (or four and a half, depending on who’s counting) military coups since 1987 and is currently under the thumb of Commodore Frank Bainimarama, who’s taken power three times since 2000, twice via military coup."
From Ethan Zuckerman's blog post Fiji: Reality, brand, mirage

"Let’s take the long view here. Later I’ll bring in the paleozoic, but for now I’d like to start just a quarter-millennium ago, with The Enlightenment, the ideas of which were applied by the framers of our republic. The Enlightenment’s value system elevated the principles of liberty, freedom, self-reliance, personal rights, and reason, among other things. It was also a movement that was in some ways suspended when Industry won the Industrial Revolution, which, among other things, created the modern corporation. By “modern” I mean since they got big. (Although the East India Company was big enough deserve the Boston Tea Party in 1773.) Think railroads, oil companies, car companies, phone companies… and media companies, starting with the oldest of the biggies: newspapers."
From Doc Searls' blog post Toward post-Journalism journalism

"What do Tommy Hilfiger, MasterCard, the World Wrestling Federation, and Tom "Scopes monkey trial" Donohue, the President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have in common? Apparently, none of them has a sense of humor when it comes to their respective brands. On October 19, 2009, the Chamber was the target of a prank by the Yes Men, a self-described "genderless, loose-knit association of some 300 imposters worldwide." A fake press release announcing a change in the Chamber's position on the climate bill followed by a fake news conference at the National Press Club left the Chamber and various media outlets covering the event, including Reuters, CNBC, and Fox Business Network, scrambling to figure out what was going on."
From Helen Fu's blog post for CMLP, Chamber of Commerce to the Yes Men: We Are Not Amused

"Google has released a dashboard tool that makes it easy for you to review all the settings and preferences you’ve provided for the various Google products you use (Docs, YouTube, Gmail, etc.). The short video here shows you how to access it. (Basically, pull down the Settings menu in the top right of the Google home page, select Google Account Settings, and then select Dashboard and log in a second time.) It’s a bit sobering to see what you’ve told Google about yourself, and what documents of yours Google has, all in one place."
From Harry Lewis' blog post What Google has on you

"I’m sorry, but the title of this post is accurate. A bunch of my work is hitting bookstores, newsstands, and the Interwebs at present, and I feel the need to publicize it all here. I promise to revert to less self-regarding blog posts after this one. I came back from a trip to find the first copy off the press of my book Enterprise 2.0 waiting for me in my office. I’ll leave it to others to discuss its content (hopefully in uniformly glowing terms); I just want to say that Harvard Business Press did a fantastic job on the book itself. It looks great, and I’m really grateful to my publisher for creating such a lovely container for the ideas. I love my Kindle, but I also still love physical books. And it’s a great feeling to see this one sitting on my desk."
From Andrew McAfee's blog post Shameless Self-promotion

"Last week, images of a war between drug traffickers and dealers in Rio de Janeiro spread across the world. Clashes between gangs from the hills Morro São João and Morro dos Macacos on October 17th frightened the population. Hundreds of state police deployed in an effort to subdue rival gangs did not help: the conflict between drug dealers and police resulted in a downed police helicopter killing three police officers, and claimed the lives of over 30 other people, among them suspected gang members and bystanders."
From Diego Casaes' blog post for Global Voices, Brazil: A view from slum dwellers on Rio's drugs war

"Today’s Columbia Journalism Review has an article by Renee Feltz on the election blog study we are working on in partnership with Columbia’s Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Reporting and John Kelly. Renee writes that the results of her interviews with bloggers and blogger outreach coordinators shows '…a fundamental difference in the candidates’ approach to the blogosphere.' According to the article: 'Barack Obama’s campaign reaches out to activist bloggers in order to communicate with and mobilize campaign volunteers and feed them into its online social networking site, MyBarackObama.com. In contrast, John McCain’s campaign takes a top-down approach, using blogs—many of which it helped incubate—as an echo chamber for channeling mostly anti-Obama attacks into the mainstream media, in order to create an impression of grassroots online support.'"
From Bruce Etling's blog post for Internet & Democracy, Campaigns Differ in Approach to Political Blogosphere [originally included in the Berkman Buzz in November 2008]