Almost Wikipedia; Tweeting the Revolution; The Penguin and the Leviathan

Almost Wikipedia: What Eight Collaborative Encyclopedia Projects Reveal About Mechanisms of Collective Action

Tuesday, October 11, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.

From Benjamin Mako Hill: I'm going to present some preliminary findings from a qualitative, inductive, case-study based analysis of 8 early projects to create online collaborative encyclopedias. It's quite likely that the only project in my dataset that you've heard of is Wikipedia. I'm am still finishing interviews but I'm hoping I can use feedback from the group to help frame the work going forward. My initial results are based on data from 8 projects -- the full population -- in the form of interviews of the projects' founders and extensive archival data. My findings are a set of propositions focused on suggesting why Wikipedia succeeded in attracting contributors while the other projects did so less effectively. In a follow-up project, I'm hoping to test these in a quantitative dataset I've been building. The project is part of a larger research project that attempts to use failure cases to understand why some attempts at online collective action are successful while most never take off. Benjamin Mako Hill is an scholar, activist, and consultant working on issues of technology and society. He is currently a researcher and PhD Candidate in a joint program between the MIT Sloan School of Management and the MIT Media Lab, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and a Research Fellow at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Tweeting the Revolution: agency, collective action, and the negotiation of risk in a networked age

Tuesday, October 18, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.

From Beth: This paper looks at the impact of social media platforms on collective action. In particular, it focuses on spheres of activism where personal risk (bodily or otherwise) is the condition of participation. For this analysis, I discuss interviews conducted with Egyptian activists around the events of Tahrir Square. Issues of copresence, witness, and visibility are central to my discussion. This talk is based on a research paper developed with my coauthor Dr. Mike Ananny. Dr. Beth Coleman’s work focuses on the role of human agency in the context of media and data engagement. She is currently a Harvard University Faculty Fellow at Berkman Center for Internet and Society and a visiting professor at the Institute of Network Cultures, Hogeschool van Amsterdam. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest

Tuesday, October 18, 6:00PM, Harvard Law School.

Harvard Professor Yochai Benkler (The Wealth of Networks) is one of the world’s top thinkers on cooperative structures. In his new book, The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest, he uses evidence from neuroscience, economics, sociology, biology, and real-world examples to break down the myth of self-interest and replace it with a model of cooperation in our businesses, our government, and our lives. Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. (Photo via Joi) RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Digital Public Library of America Plenary Meeting

Friday, October 21, All Day, National Archives, Washington, DC.

The first Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Plenary Meeting, convened by the DPLA Secretariat at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and hosted by The National Archives in Washington, DC, will bring together a wide range of stakeholders in a broad, open forum to present the history of and vision for the DPLA effort, to showcase the best ideas and models submitted to the Beta Sprint (an open call for code and concepts defining how the DPLA should operate), and to create multiple points of entry for public participation in the work of the DPLA. Registration Required. more information on our website>

Media Law in the Digital Age: The Rules Have Changed -- Again

Saturday, October 22, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA.

Co-produced by the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Kennesaw State's Center for Sustainable Journalism, Media Law in the Digital Age is a must-attend event for anyone who publishes online content, works in digital media, or studies the way in which technology has influenced journalism and law. Whether you are blogger, social media strategist, journalist, or media attorney, you know that the law governing digital media is constantly changing. The best way to protect your organization, your clients or yourself is to know what the rules are today. Join experts in the field of law, digital media, journalism and academia as they lead panel sessions in an intensive day-long conference. Registration Required. more information on our website>

Intisar Rabb and Umbreen Bhatti on Islawmix: Content and Context for Islamic Law in the News

Recent years have seen an uptick in coverage of Islamic law (shar??a) in American news media, policy, and academic circles. What are the rules that dictate how Muslims in America conduct themselves? How do or should our legal institutions respond? When reporting on issues involving Muslims, how can journalists or academics distinguish individual preference or culture from Islamic law? What available, authoritative resources can best inform interested readers, from the casual to the scholarly? islawmix aims to fill the information gap in this important area. In this talk, Intisar A. Rabb — Berkman Fellow and faculty of Boston College Law School — and Umbreen Bhatti — co-founder of islawmix and a lawyer with experience in civil rights and constitutional law — walk through “why islawmix” and explore how islawmix aims to accomplish the rather ambitious task of providing accessible resources for parsing such complex information a nd developing resources for the aggregation and contextualization of significant trends in Islamic law. video/audio on our website>

Radio Berkman 183: The Cooperation

Are human beings — as consultants, researchers, and the authors of business books have thought for years — fundamentally motivated by self interest? Or is there a deeper cooperative instinct that drives us to work? Those are the questions that fuel Yochai Benkler‘s investigation in The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest. In it Benkler challenges the rather embarrassing idea that people are primarily selfish by citing examples — from collective farming to neuroscience to the world’s richest corporations — demonstrating that people are a lot more cooperative than they get credit for. Benkler spoke with David Weinberger about his new book for this week’s Radio Berkman. video/audio on our website>