You're a 16-year-old Muslim kid in America. Say your name is Mohammad Abdullah. Your schoolmates are convinced that you're a terrorist. They keep typing in Google queries likes "is Mohammad Abdullah a terrorist?" and "Mohammad Abdullah al Qaeda." Google's search engine learns. All of a sudden, auto-complete starts suggesting terms like "Al Qaeda" as the …
Audiences Affect Artists Too: Rethinking “Participation”
Over the last twenty years we've seen a boom in research about "participatory culture" that tries, in part, to make sense of the many ways audiences engage popular culture. This work tends to start from the points of view of audience members. Recently (sometimes during my visits at MSR), I've been coming at this from …
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You’re the Manager but I’m the Mayor: Understanding Foursquare Check-ins in Claimed Venues
This talk is by Germaine Halegoua, one of our fantastic interns this summer and a brand-new Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas. She outlines her findings from her summer research project, about the location-based mobile service Foursquare. The presentation includes preliminary findings and analysis from an ethnographic study of Foursquare users in the Boston …
Shouting Fire in a Crowded Hashtag
Narco Censorship The press is one of the many casualties of Mexico's ongoing violence, in particular, the local media. Newspapers and TV stations are caught in a battle between censorship, control and threats from the drug cartels, and the local governments. In some cities, people often witness shootings, grenade attacks and other violent events, but …
How much is a life worth in pixels?
Analysis of yesterday's news coverage of the Mexican massacre Mexican Tweets More than fifty people were murdered yesterday in what is now the most violent episode in the ongoing Mexican Drug War. Most of the victims were women, some were pregnant. After learning about the horrific massacre in Monterrey, I spent several hours reading the …
My summer internship: On finding gender
I showed up at NERD with a set of questions about the relationship between making physical things, producing information, and being part of a community of peers that I thought I could answer by looking at food blogs. I knew only a little about food bloggers so I decided I had better start with macro-level …
Random thoughts about piracy
Living in the US, I see signs of media piracy all the time. I have numerous friends who are unrepentant music/movie/TV/book pirates. And while I buy a surprising quantity of my media, I also pirate that which I cannot get due to international rights laws or due to foolish business decisions on behalf of media …
What We’re Reading
We're a diverse bunch here at the SMC, but what we have in common is that we are nerds who read a lot. I went on office patrol to find out what my compatriots have selected as their August summer reading. danah boyd Parenting out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times, by Margaret Nelson …
Do Anonymous Websites Work?
Some advocates of "real name" policies argue that pseudonymity is far too easy to abuse. They suggest that "real name" policies help reduce spamming and trolling. This might be true, however, you can still get a fair amount of troll-like behavior and hateful discourse in "real name" sites. Just sit on these Facebook searches for …
Riots, social media, and the value of ‘first responders’
David Cameron has vowed to do 'whatever it takes' to restore order after the riots: this seems to include blocking access to social networking sites. "Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organized via social media," Cameron said. "And when people are using social media for violence we need to …
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