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Berkman Buzz: September 2, 2011

Berkman Buzz: September 2, 2011

A look at the past week's online Berkman conversations

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What's being discussed...take your pick or browse below.

* New video mash-ups from Hyper-Public
* Joseph Reagle explores gender bias in Wikipedia and Britannica
* Doc Searls compares Google+ to Microsoft's Hailstorm and Passport services
* Dan Gillmor reviews the Washington Post's new social media guidelines
* The Citizen Media Law Project reviews a new CA statute prohibiting jurors from using social media
* Weekly Global Voices: "Jamaica: Block on Ad for Acceptance of Gay Family Members"

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The full buzz.

"As I announced in a previous entry from this blog, at the Youth and Media (YAM) lab we were working on the creation of a remix version of the 12 video-interviews we had with the participants of the Hyperpublic symposium. Although this work took us longer than expected, finally we completed two video mash-ups that are a combination of the interviewees’ voices and a montage of different Public Domain and Creative Commons licensed photographs, videos, and songs we found on the internet."
From Andres Lombana Bermudez's blog post for Hyper-Public, "Remixing Hyperpublic: Two Video Mash-Ups"

"The International Journal of Communication has published Lauren Rhue's and my paper on 'Gender Bias in Wikipedia and Britannica'. The method of crawling the sites, the large size of the comparison, and the guessing of genders were interesting technical challenges that once addressed permitted us to write."
From Joseph Reagle's blog post, "Gender Bias in Wikipedia and Britannica"

"One difference from Hailstorm is that Google isn’t playing all its cards yet. Microsoft laid all theirs on the table with Hailstorm, and its identity service, Passport. What they wanted was to be the iDP, or IDentity Provider, for everybody. Is that what Google has in mind too? In 2005 John Battelle said Google was 'angling to become the de facto marketplace for global commerce.' That might be a stretch, but it’s the vector that counts here, and Google+ points in that direction."
From Doc Searls's blog post for ProjectVRM, "Circling Around Your Wallet"

"The Washington Post’s newly public 'Guidelines for Digital Publishing' are more than 5,200 words long. That’s about 5,100 words too many. This is not an attack on what the Post, which labored for many months before giving birth to this behemoth, has put together. The guidelines are, in fact, an interesting examination of how technology’s collision with journalism has forced journalists to rethink what they do and how they do it."
From Dan Gillmor's blog post, "Washington Post’s Social Media Rules: Endless and Mostly Meaningless"

"California has adopted a new statute which clarifies that jurors may not use social media and the Internet – such as texting, Twitter, Facebook, and Internet searches – to research or disseminate information about cases, and can be held in criminal or civil contempt for violating these restrictions."
From Eric Robinson's blog post for the Citizen Media Law Project, "New California Law Prohibits Jurors' Social Media Use"

"The Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG) recently produced a public service announcement aimed at encouraging Jamaicans to unconditionally accept members of their families who are homosexual. The organisation hoped to have had the spot broadcast on national television in August - but as a new month begins, the Jamaican media still appear to be firm in its stance that it will not air the advertisement, which features former Miss Jamaica World and Miss Jamaica Universe Christine Straw and her gay brother, Matthew, sharing their personal story. Public service announcements are typically aired free of cost in Jamaica, but in discussions, media heads have apparently said that even if it were a paid ad they still would not broadcast it because they reserve the right to decide on content."
From Janine Mendes-Franco's post for Global Voices, "Jamaica: Block on Ad for Acceptance of Gay Family Members"

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Compiled by Rebekah Heacock.

The Berkman Buzz is selected weekly from the posts of Berkman Center people and projects and sometimes from the Center's wider network.

Suggestions and feedback about the Buzz are always welcome and can be emailed to buzz@cyber.harvard.edu.