If Your Government Fails, Can You Create a New One With Your Phone?

How citizens are using technology to fill in for weak states.By Philip N. Howard Myanmar is opening[...]

Topics Governance

Why Governments Use Broadcast TV and Dissidents Use Twitter

How regimes take control of official media channels and push activists onto the Internet.By Philip N. Howard[...]

Topics Governance Social Media

Are There Countries Whose Situations Worsened with the Arrival of the Internet?

(This post originally appeared on Freedom To Tinker, after @evgenymorozov tweeted that he would want help with a graph[...]

Topics Governance

The New Cold War: Information Policy and Political Rift

Topics Governance

Let’s Build Pro-Democracy Twitter Bots

Most Twitter users try to ignore messages from robot accounts. But maybe we should be putting[...]

Topics Governance Social Media

The Real Success in the Tunisian Elections is an Authentic, Democratic Process

TUNISIA, a country that had never experienced democracy, held a successful election last week. This was[...]

Topics Elections Governance

When Do States Disconnect Their Digital Networks?

Although there have been many studies of the different ways regimes censor the use of social[...]

Topics Governance

The Internet and Iran ‘It Is Possible to Pull the Plug’

Extensive Interview in Der Spiegel.

Topics Arab Spring Governance Social Movements

New Challenges to Political Privacy: Lessons from the First U.S. Presidential Race in the Web 2.0 Era

Pundits and scholars laud online campaigning for its potential to democratize politics and praise the 2008[...]

Topics Elections Governance

Information Policy and Technology Diffusion: Lessons from Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia

Some governments choose telecommunications policies that hinder technology diffusion, while others choose policies that appear to[...]

Topics Governance Teaching Resources

Telecommunications Reform, Internet Use and Mobile Phone Adoption in the Developing World

How do telecommunications policies influence technology adoption? Has regulatory reform helped mitigate or exacerbate the digital[...]

Topics Digital Divide Governance Mobile Phones Original Data Political Communication Political Economy Political Economy of Media Social Inequality

Testing the Leap Frog Hypothesis

This paper tests the ‘leap-frog’ hypothesis by modeling the impact of existing telecommunications infrastructure, controlling for[...]

Topics Digital Divide Governance Political Communication Political Economy Political Economy of Media Social Inequality Social Theory

Digitizing the Social Contract: Producing American Political Culture in the Age of New Media

Campaigns are complex exercises in the creation, transmission, and mutation of significant political symbols. However, there[...]

Topics Governance