Upcoming Events and Digital Media Roundup

Academic Uses of Social Media: Exploring 21st Century Communications

Tuesday, May 3, 12:00pm ET, Webcast Event

Social media — from blogs to wikis to tweets — have become academic media, new means by which scholars communicate, collaborate, and teach. Hear from a distinguished faculty panel, moderated by John Palfrey, about how they are adopting and adapting to new communication and networking tools, following a keynote by social media thought leader danah boyd. Co-sponsored by the Office of Faculty Development & Diversity at Harvard and the Harvard Office of News and Public Affairs This event will be webcast live. more information on our website>

Culturomics: Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books

Tuesday, May 10, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St., Cambridge, MA.

From Erez & JB: We constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain of ‘culturomics,’ focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000. We show how this approach can provide insights about fields as diverse as lexicography, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology, the pursuit of fame, censorship, and historical epidemiology. Culturomics extends the boundaries of rigorous quantitative inquiry to a wide array of new phenomena spanning the social sciences and the humanities. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group

Wednesday, May 11, 6:00pm, MIT (Room TBA)

The "Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group" is a forum for fellows and affiliates of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, Yale Law School Information Society Project, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University to discuss their ongoing research. This month's presenters will feature Malte Ziewitz on "How’s my feedback? Six puzzles and some notes on web-based review and rating schemes"; Nicholas Bramble on "Legislating by Safe Harbor"; and more. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Hyper-Public: A Symposium on Designing Privacy and Public Space

June 9-10, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Technology is transforming privacy and reshaping what it means to be in public. Our interactions—personal, professional, financial, etc.—increasingly take place online, where they are archived, searchable, and easily replicated. Discussions of privacy often focus solely on the question of how to protect privacy. But a thriving public sphere, whether physical or virtual, is also essential to society. Hyper-Public: A Symposium on Designing Privacy and Public Space, hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, will bring together computer scientists, ethnographers, architects, historians, artists and legal scholars to discuss how design influences privacy and public space, how it shapes and is shaped by human behavior and experience, and how it can cultivate norms such as tolerance and diversity. Registration is open. more information on our website>

Greg Elliott & Hugo Van Vuuren on the Communication Crises and the Evolution of Personal and Cultural Protocols

There is a full-scale "communication crisis" going on. Otherwise meaningful conversations and valuable data points are spread incoherently across various platforms. As communication channels increase in number and function, how will formerly society-wide notions of culture and protocol evolve to a personal and group level? Greg Elliott — a master's student at the MIT Media Lab — and Hugo Van Vuuren — a Berkman fellow — present Protocol, a tool to help users communicate their personal communication preferences over multiple communication platforms (in beta at www.protocol.by). Watch the video or download the audio>

Radio Berkman 181: The Management (Rethinking Music VII)

In our last episode we talked about how artists can feel besieged from all sides. Fans, promoters, labels — when you're talented and famous everyone wants a piece of you. Today's guest is one of the most important people in a musician's life. He's the guy that keeps the vultures at bay, and makes sure the artists can focus on their music. He is The Manager. Michael McDonald is the founder of the boutique artist management company Mick Management, home to artists like John Mayer, Brett Dennen, and Ray LaMontagne. One of Michael's most popular artists, John Mayer, has gone from a small-time musician with a street team to a multi-platinum artist with an amazing fan interaction on twitter. John Mayer later abandoned Twitter (and nearly 4 million followers) when he felt it was too limiting. Michael talked with us about how artists experiment with promotion and social media (sometimes with mixed results), and how managers help deal with the demands placed on artists. Watch the video or download the audio>

Radio Berkman 180: No Such Thing as a Free Sample? (Rethinking Music VI)

Musicians often feel besieged on all sides. Promoters, labels, publishers, radio stations, and venues can make an artist feel exploited and overwhelmed. But in the digital age it might feel like fans and fellow musicians are taking a bite out of them, too. Second to piracy the phenomenon of fan created content is the greatest irritation to professional musicians and their stakeholders. From the upload of a song to YouTube (which involves almost no creative effort) to sampling, remixing or creating a fan-made music video — many artists feel fan initiatives show disrespect for their rights. And some are using the tools of PR and the law to make their voices heard. Jay Rosenthal is the General Counsel for the National Music Publishers' Association with decades of experience working with music industry organizations on the legal side, and representing artists like Salt n Pepa, Thievery Corporation, and Mary Chapin Carpenter. We talked about professional musicianship, a nd what kind of threat sampling and remix projects (like Girl Talk's "All Day" and DJ Danger Mouse's "Grey Album") poses to the music industry. Watch the video or download the audio>