How Brown Moses exposed Syrian arms trafficking from his front room | World news. Eliot Higgins, aka Brown Moses, encounters a new video from Syria from matthew weaver on Vimeo. Eliot Higgins has no need for a flak jacket, nor does he carry himself with the bravado of a war reporter. As an unemployed finance and admin worker his expertise lies in compiling spreadsheets, not dodging bullets. He has never been near a war zone. But all that hasn't stopped him from breaking some of the most important stories on the Syrian conflict in the last year. His work on analysing Syrian weapons, which began as a hobby, is now frequently cited by human rights groups and has led to questions in parliament. Higgins' latest discovery of a new batch of Croatian weapons in the hands of Syrian rebels appears to have blown the lid on a covert international operation to arm the opposition.
And he's done it all, largely unpaid, from a laptop more than 3,000 miles away from Damascus, in his front room in a Leicester suburb. He is amused to be referred to as a weapons expert. How ICIJ’s Project Team Analyzed the Offshore Files. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ exploration of the secretive world of offshore companies and trusts began after a computer hard drive packed with corporate data and personal information and e-mails arrived in the mail. Gerard Ryle, ICIJ’s director, obtained the data trove as a result of his three-year investigation of Australia’s Firepower scandal, a case involving offshore havens and corporate fraud. The offshore information totaled more than 260 gigabytes of useful data.
ICIJ’s analysis of the hard drive showed that it held about 2.5 million files, including more than 2 million e-mails that help chart the offshore industry over a long period of explosive growth. It is one of the biggest collections of leaked data ever gathered and analyzed by a team of investigative journalists. The drive contained four large databases plus half a million text, PDF, spreadsheet, image and web files. Tackling the data Unreadable documents A frustrating but rewarding road.
With Friends Like These: Freedom House’s Freedom on the Internet Report: An Exercise in Applied Ideology « Gurstein's Community Informatics. On an e-list which discusses Internet Governance someone just pointed to an article breathlessly headlining “U.S. Ranks Second in Internet Freedom, Behind Estonia” and pointing to a report on “Freedom on the Net” produced from “research” conducted by Freedom House. Evidently these reports have some resonance since this one turned up some 550,000 “results” on a Google search!
Notably according to the acknowledgements, “this publication was made possible by the generous financial contributions of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), the U.S. Freedom on the Net aims to measure each country’s level of internet and digital media freedom. For those with an interest, it is worth taking the time to download the report (662 pages) and go to the “Methodology” section on page 640 and following. The “methodology” appears to be as follows: Right… Like this: Like Loading... As Prop, Cudgel or Sensor, Digital Maps Have a Future in Global Activism. When Rebecca Chiao, a Cairo-based development worker, co-founded Harassmap in 2010, the idea was to combat Egypt's sexual harassment crisis via grassroots community organizing.
The interactive map is a platform on which reports of incidents, ranging from catcalling to rape, are aggregated and curated so that anyone interested in gauging the scope of the problem has access to instant data visualization, which presents a sobering picture. Chiao was surprised that her small all-volunteer grassroots initiative immediately became the object of much international media attention. She was also a bit dismayed that reporting focused almost exclusively on the nascent NGO’s eponymous Ushahidi-based map, rather than on the crucial, grassroots community work she and her colleagues worked so hard at establishing and growing. Attitudes on the street were not going to change as a result of an interactive map that existed on the Internet, she pointed out.
In south India, Nithya V. Maptivism today. Books | TEJU COLE. Open City (a novel), the story of a young Nigerian-German psychiatrist in New York City five years after 9/11, was published by Random House, named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and won both the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Internationaler Literaturpreis. It has been translated into twelve languages. Every Day is for the Thief (a novella) is about a young man living in New York City who goes to Lagos for a short and bewildering visit. It was my first book, published by Cassava Republic Press in 2007 in Nigeria.
A revised version was published in the US (Random House) and the UK (Faber & Faber) in 2014, and was a New York Times Editors’ Pick. I’m at work on my third book, Radio Lagos, which will be a non-fictional narrative of contemporary Lagos. Also, collaboration is an important part of my work, and I have contributed chapters and introductions to a number of books. The Social Media Reader : Michael Mandiberg. Fullscreen Author:Michael MandibergKeywords:Social Media; academia; technology; computers; Internet; media; sharing; social networking; Free Culture; political economy; collaboration; identity; copyright; laborYear:2012Language:EnglishCollection:opensource Description Culling a broad range and incorporating different styles of scholarship from foundational pieces and published articles to unpublished pieces, journalistic accounts, personal narratives from blogs, and whitepapers, The Social Media Reader promises to be an essential text, with contributions from Lawrence Lessig, Henry Jenkins, Clay Shirky, Tim O'Reilly, Chris Anderson, Yochai Benkler, danah boyd, and Fred von Loehmann, to name a few.
It covers a wide-ranging topical terrain, much like the internet itself, with particular emphasis on collaboration and sharing, the politics of social media and social networking, Free Culture and copyright politics, and labor and ownership. Edited by Michael Mandiberg Published 2012 by NYU Press. Design Process In The Responsive Age. Advertisement You cannot plan for and design a responsive1, content-focused2, mobile-first3 website the same way you’ve been creating websites for years—you just can’t. If your goal is to produce something that is not fixed-width and serves smaller devices just the styles they require, why would you use a dated process that contradicts those goals? I’d like to walk you through some problems caused by using old processes with responsive design. Let’s look into an evolving design process we’ve4 been using with some promising new deliverables and tools. This should provide a starting point for you to freshen up your own process and bring it into the responsive age.
The Problem The issues caused when trying to force new results from an old process are significant yet, strangely enough, not immediately obvious. How should the layout adjust for smaller-sized devices? This can cause major problems if the developer doesn’t feel confident in the visual arena. Work More or Work Efficiently?
(jc) (fi) Responsive Web Design. The English architect Christopher Wren once quipped that his chosen field “aims for Eternity,” and there’s something appealing about that formula: Unlike the web, which often feels like aiming for next week, architecture is a discipline very much defined by its permanence. Article Continues Below A building’s foundation defines its footprint, which defines its frame, which shapes the facade. Each phase of the architectural process is more immutable, more unchanging than the last. Creative decisions quite literally shape a physical space, defining the way in which people move through its confines for decades or even centuries.
Working on the web, however, is a wholly different matter. Our work is defined by its transience, often refined or replaced within a year or two. But the landscape is shifting, perhaps more quickly than we might like. In recent years, I’ve been meeting with more companies that request “an iPhone website” as part of their project. A flexible foundation#section1 . Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) Extreme Citizen Science is a situated, bottom-up practice that takes into account local needs, practices and culture and works with broad networks of people to design and build new devices and knowledge creation processes that can transform the world. Intelligent MapsCharging the smartphones in the rainforest using a pot charger.
Intelligent MapsGirls from Komo (Republic of Congo) learning to map in the forest. Intelligent MapsA girl from Poulani demonstrating how to use the software to an older woman. Intelligent MapsA group of men from Gbagbali geo-tagging a fruit tree. Intelligent MapsA community in Komo engaging with Intelligent Maps. Intelligent MapsCongo hunter-gatherers interacting with mobile data collection application designed and developed by ExCiteS.
Intelligent MapsDr Jerome Lewis introduces the decision tree using large versions of the icons. Balloon Mapping with the Public Laboratory for Open Science and TechnologyUniversity College London. Mapping for ChangeCommunity Mapping. Extreme Citizen Science blog. Journalists and Infographic designers: a love-hate relationship (part two) The loss of space inside the news rooms and the challenges for both professionals Of all the aspects of the relationship between information designers and journalists inside the news room (read the first part of the article here), none are as tense as the moments when one tries to invade the other’s domain of expertise. The most common and somewhat established scenario is the one when the journalist suggests a change in the infographic, asking to ‘make it bigger”, “re-order the elements” or “take it out”.
An infographic (like the text) has premises that guide its production, but during this process he goes through changes ranging from small details to having to start all over again – this, by the way, is ‘the’ nightmare for any infographics designer. (How Mariano Rivera Dominates Hitters | New York Times. O prêmio Best of Show do Malofiej 19 foi conquistado com um trabalho intenso de pesquisa que notadamente necessita de muita interação e pró atividade de toda a equipe)
Journalists and Infographic designers: a love-hate relationship (part one) The coexistence between these professionals can be hard and stressful... Inside a newsroom, the intelligent dispute for editorial space can be the perfect environment for new ideas to grow and consolidate. Team editing can result in high quality work, both The New York Times and National Geographic are perfect examples of how the collaboration between professionals of different areas (not only journalists and information designers) can make history. But how do journalists and infographic designers go along in other newsrooms? In this post I speak as an infographic designer, but without avoiding some questions that are maybe inconvenient for us, like attitude, commitment and training. (Gulf of Mexico: an infographic by the National Geographic, winner of the Peter Sullivan Award (Best of Show) at Malofiej 19. Within this scenario, a subject rarely discussed is the relationship between journalists and infographic designers.
Old concepts and personal views began to be demolished one by one. Social Media News and Web Tips – Mashable – The Social Media Guide. Jonathan Stray. About. I’ve worked at the intersection of community development, participatory media, rights-based approaches and new information and communication technologies (ICTs) for almost 20 years, starting in El Salvador where I spent the 1990s.
This has included being involved on the ‘field’ side in translation, communications, programs, grants, administration, management, disaster response, youth media, and ICT4D. On the US side, I’ve worked on donor development, program development, youth engagement, development education, research, strategy and innovation. I’m an anthropologist by degree and a participant observer by nature. Areas of interest and focus: I work with various organizations both individually and through Kurante, a small firm I started with Wayan Vota. I am a trusted friend to Project Restart and TechChange and on the board of SIMLab (creators of FrontlineSMS) and the International Center for Advocates against Discrimination.
Contact me at lindaraftree [at] gmail [dot] com or @meowtree. The Browser | Writing Worth Reading.