Berkman Buzz: May 2, 2013

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Eric Gordon ponders a new definition of civic action

In 2000, the sociologist Robert Putnam was unambiguous in his concern that the new World Wide Web was leading to the decay of civic engagement. People were simply spending too much time online and becoming more comfortable with being disconnected from their physical space. Much has changed since the days of Alta Vista and personal homepages, but specifically the proliferation of social media and what I have elsewhere called net locality have led to a complex civic landscape where civic actions exist well beyond geographic communities and institutions. It is possible to advocate and to organize entirely online. Protesting Facebook’s newest privacy policy is a civic action, signing an online petition against the passage of SOPA and PIPA is a civic action, even joining a Kickstarter campaign to get a website funded can be a civic action. These “online” actions are civic insofar as they are taken to affect change in a community or institution outside of one’s private domain. In other words, the deliberate taking part in any social situation that extends beyond one’s immediate family and home can be considered civic.

From Eric Gordon's blog post, "What are civic actions?" About Eric | @ericbot

Facebook is evaluating its policies regarding decapitation videos in response to some Mexican narcovideos: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22368287 >—Andrés Monroy-Hernández (@andresmh)

Ethan Zuckerman responds to David Rieff's critique of "cyberutopianism"

As one of the fools pilloried in David Rieff's scathing attack on "cyberutopianism," I'm of two minds about responding. I've urged other authors unfairly characterized as cyberutopians to resist the temptation to respond to critics who misrepresent their arguments in the hopes of creating controversy. Rieff praise