The Promises of Web-based Social Experiments; The Past & Future of the 'Arab Spring'; Online Consultation & Democratic Info Flow

The Promises of Web-based Social Experiments

Tuesday, February 21, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.

The advent of the internet provides social scientists with a fantastic tool for conducting behavioral experiments online at a very large-scale and at an affordable cost. It is surprising, however, how little research has leveraged the affordances of the internet to set up such social experiments so far. In this talk, Jerome Hergueux will introduce the audience to one of the first online platforms specifically designed for conducting interactive social experiments over the internet to date. He will present the preliminary results of a randomized experiment that compares behavioral measures of social preferences obtained both in a traditional University laboratory and online, with a focus on engaging the audience in a reflection about the specificities, limitations and promises of online experimental economics as a tool for social science research. Jerome Hergueux is a PhD candidate in Economics at Sciences Po Paris and the University of Strasbourg and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Wadah Khanfar: "One Year after Mubarak: The Past and Future of the 'Arab Spring'"

Friday, February 24, 5:00pm ET, MIT Media Lab, E14 6th Floor. This event is co-hosted by the MIT Media Lab, Center for Civic Media, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Nieman Foundation for Journalism, and the Edward R. Murrow Center for Public Diplomacy.

Wadah Khanfar is president of the Sharq Forum, an international think tank focused on political and economic development in the Arab world, and former director general of the Al Jazeera network. Under Khanfar's leadership, Al Jazeera offered to the world a front-row seat to witness the fall of dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt, and the wave of rebellion that swept the Arab world. A year later, Khanfar reflects on the hopes raised by the Arab Spring, the changes that have—and haven't—taken place, and the challenges Egypt and other countries face on the road towards democracy. Khanfar's talk will be followed by a dialogue with Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab; Ethan Zuckerman, director of MIT's Center for Civic Media; and Mohamed Nanabhay, head of online at Al Jazeera English, as well as questions and answers with the audience. Wadah Khanfar first appeared as a commentator on Al Jazeera shortly after the network was founded, in 1996. In that role, he developed a reputation for a willingness to report from the front lines of international conflict, managing the network's Kabul bureau, reporting from Kurdish Iraq, and serving as bureau chief for Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein. In 2003, he became managing director of Al Jazeera, and in 2006, director general. He announced his resignation from the network in September 2011, and subsequently co-founded the Sharq Foundation. more information on our website>

Online Consultation and Democratic Information Flow

Tuesday, February 28, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.

The use of new media by governments around the world to engage the general public more directly in actual policy making raises significant questions of democratic theory and practice. Visiting Professor Peter M. Shane, the Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law at Ohio State University, will discuss his ongoing research on two of these questions: Under what circumstances might online consultation actually make democratic participation more meaningful? What role could the regular availability of online consultation play in engineering an information and communication ecology more genuinely supportive of democratic information flow? Peter M. Shane is the Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law at the Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law and a Visiting Professor of law at Harvard Law School. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

RB 190: Your Date, Reverse Engineered

Until everyone started using the net to date sociologists didn't have much information to go by when trying to figure out the beautiful process of human courtship. Only things like this. But dating sites are the 2nd leading source for modern relationships. And the data collected by dating sites sheds some light on how the heck people are getting together in the first place. Berkman Fellow, Harvard PhD Candidate, and Friend of the Show Kevin Lewis dug into some of this data and shares his amazing findings on how folks are pairing up online. video/audio on our website>

Kevin Lewis on Mate Choice in an Online Dating Site

Data from online dating sites offer an unprecedented opportunity to address questions of longstanding interest to social scientists. In this talk, Kevin Lewis — Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Sociology and a fellow at the Berkman — introduces a new social network dataset based on behavioral data from a popular online dating site; discusses the utility of these data for understanding the shape of contemporary stratification systems; and provides a first look at the dynamics of inequality, exclusion, and gender asymmetry that characterize the early stages of mate choice. video/audio on our website>