29
Oct 14

“Open Development Cambodia” Interview with Executive Director Thy Try

Johannes Kast presents an open data mapping platform in Cambodia and interviews the executive director

ODC

ODC Logo

Open Development Cambodia is a novel, non-commercial open data platform designed to collect data and make it available, e.g. through interactive maps, in order to address environmental, economic and social issues through the unbiased lens of raw information. They also provide important, up-to-date information on natural ressources, laws & regulations, company profiles and more.

It’s the first of its kind in South East Asia and both the software that is used and the methodology are open source, transparent and freely accessible to everyone. Especially in recent years, Cambodia is undergoing constant, fast-pace changes, so the mapping software provides a useful illustration.

The ODC Team

The ODC Team

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28
Oct 14

Twitter and the MDGs

To test the hypothesis whether social media in the form of blog posts and twitter have any influence on the discourses of international development, Tobias Denskus and Daniel E. Esser collected tweets and blogposts related to the Millennium Development Goals during a period in 2010. By analysing tweets and blog posts around the UN High-level plenary meeting of the General Assembly on the Millennium Development Goals held in 2010 the authors gained insights in how social media is used in relation to high level conferences. Their conclusion, as presented in an article in the Third World Quarterly[1], is that the social media sphere failed to bring forward alternative agendas
and priorities, and rather reinforced the current ideas around international development. Their analysis of tweets also showed that a majority of tweeters were closely related to organisations part of the MDG work, such as Save the Children or Amnesty International. Denskus and Esser used the service www.topsy.com for their analysis and performed searches on the hashtag (#) MDG for every hour during the High-level conference. Three years after said conference, on September 25th 2013, the President of the UN General Assembly held a follow-up meeting to take stock of the situation with the MDG:s. Using a similar method to Denskus and Esser, I intended to test whether Continue reading →


19
Oct 14

2014 and the Ministry of Truth | Newspeak: Minitrue

Abigail Leffler says Big Data Brother… one bit at a time

ICT (Internet communications technology) enables gathering of digital data derived from our online interactions and other iterations such as those that come from GPS (Global Positioning System)-equipped devices. This interactivity being ‘a necessary condition for social, cultural and political participation’ (Lievrouw: 2013, p. 15) functions as a catalyst for change, development and humanitarian relief.

Just consider that all the tweets, blogposts and Facebook entries generate big data and so do all the ‘likes’ and endorsements and any other information pointing to user connection networks and to activity levels of individuals on the Net.

To give you an idea of how large big data actually is, every minute of every day we create

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11
Sep 14

Hello world!

This is a test