The Global Network of Internet and Society Research Centers (NoC) and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University have released a new report on Multistakeholder Governance Groups, which informs the debate about Internet governance models and mechanisms.

via Multistakeholder as Governance Groups: New Study by Global Network of Internet and Society Centers | Harvard Law Today.

The Global Network of Internet and Society Research Centers (NoC) and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University have released a report on “multistakeholder governance groups” to better inform the discussion over Internet governance models and mechanisms.

The report is the result of a globally coordinated academic research effort among NoC participants and consists of 12 geographically and topically diverse case studies of governance structures along with a synthesis paper that summarizes key findings across these cases.

via One size won’t fit all | Harvard Gazette.

Media Cloud, a tool developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Center for Civic Media and Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, measures comparative attention to topics and locations in different segments of the news media. A study we conducted in April 2014 suggests that media outlets publish three to ten times as many stories about France than Nigeria. This disparity is striking as Nigeria’s population (estimated at 173 million) is almost three times the size of France’s (66 million).

via Media Coverage of Charlie Hebdo and the Baga Massacre: A Study in Contrasts – Fair Observer.

n response a loose coalition of Islamist hackers have defaced several French websites. Several hacking groups are claiming responsibility for “religiously motivated defacements,” Helmi Noman, a researcher with the Berkman Center at Harvard University and the Citizen Lab at University of Toronto told Mashable.One group, calling itself the United Islamic Cyber Force, taunted Anonymous in various defacement while calling on other Muslim hackers to join its “OpFrance” hacking campaign.

via It’s hacker jihad: Islamist skiddies square up to Anonymous • The Register.

A loose coalition of Islamist hackers has defaced several French websites in response to “OpCharlieHebdo,” a cyber operation launched by Anonymous hackers late last week after the attacks that killed 12 people at the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

In the last few days, “tens” of hacking groups have started claiming responsibility “for religious motivated defacements,” according to Helmi Noman, a researcher with the Berkman Center at Harvard University and the Citizen Lab at University of Toronto. These defacements seem the latest development in an ongoing online spat between Islamist and pro-Western hacktivists.

via Islamist hackers deface French sites in response to ‘Operation Charlie Hebdo’.

It’s also quaint to think that users would click through the multiple dialogue boxes necessary to mimic informed consent, said Jonathan L Zittrain, director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Would you? Instead, he said, there ought to be independent proxies who represent the users and can perform that checking function.”I worry about leaning too hard on choice,” he said, “when the real thing is just treat your users with dignity.”

via Big data scientists face ethical challenges after Facebook study – University World News.

. Shapiro got his start in public radio as an intern at The Connection, a show hosted by Christopher Lydon on WBUR. Shapiro moved to Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society in 2002, where his interest in public radio, the Internet, and entrepreneurialism grew.“It was sort of a nascent moment. I feel like it was the end of the dot-com first wave — this huge, churning commerce machine sort of collapsed and none of the new architecture had taken shape. There was no new investment going into startups.”

via Five things you should know about Jake Shapiro, of PRX – Business – The Boston Globe.

Any time Google censors something, it notes it in a public log on its transparency report. Google also provides a link to chillingeffects.com, a Web site run by Harvard’s Berkman Center that records online content that has been censored.

via Google: The reluctant censor of the Internet – ABC15 Arizona.

The Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain summarised the findings thus: “Overall, users notified of their friends’ voting were 0.39% more likely to vote than those in the control group, and any resulting decisions to cast a ballot also appeared to ripple to the behaviour of close Facebook friends, even if those people hadn’t received the original message. That small increase in turnout rates amounted to a lot of new votes. The researchers concluded that their Facebook graphic directly mobilised 60,000 voters, and, thanks to the ripple effect, ultimately caused an additional 340,000 votes to be cast that day. As they point out, [in 2000] George W Bush won Florida, and thus the presidency, by 537 votes – fewer than 0.01% of the votes cast in that state.”

via Could Facebook be a factor in the next election? | Technology | The Guardian.

It could have been North Koreans but not connected to the government. According to security expert Bruce Schneier, “reusing old attack code is a sign of a more conventional hacker being behind this.” There is consensus among security experts that there was nothing about this hack that required the resources of a nation-state.

Both the US Government and Sony Have Political Reasons to Blame North Korea

Sony faces the possibility of numerous lawsuits as a result of sensitive data from employees, ex-employees and various partners being exposed. According to Jonathan Zittrain, professor of law and computer science at Harvard University, Sony might have some immunity from these lawsuits if this attack was part of an act of war.

via Why Security Experts Are Skeptical that North Korea Masterminded the Sony Attack – Business Insider.