Internet Monitor, a research project based at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, recently published the project’s second annual report, “Internet Monitor 2014: Reflections on the Digital World.” The report is a collection of roughly three dozen short contributions that highlight and discuss some of the most compelling events and trends in the digitally networked environment over the past year.
Internet Monitor project evaluates, describes, and summarizes the means, mechanisms, and extent of Internet content controls and Internet activity around the world.
The project’s annual report, intended for a general interest audience, covers a broad range of issues and regions, including an examination of Europe’s “right to be forgotten,” a review of the current state of mobile security, an exploration of a new wave of movements attempting to counter hate speech online, and a speculative fiction story exploring what our increasingly data-driven world might bring. The report focuses on the interplay between technological platforms and policy; growing tensions between protecting personal privacy and using big data for social good; the implications of digital communications tools for public discourse and collective action; and current debates around the future of Internet governance.
This year’s report also includes a “Year in Review” interactive timeline, which highlights the year’s most fascinating Internet-related news stories, from censorship to Heartbleed to the Pirate Bay raid. A “By the Numbers” section offers an eclectic look at some of the year’s digital statistics such as the number of tweets per minute in 2014 (up 155,000 from last year) and the number of the top 100 accounts on Twitter that belong to Bollywood stars.
The full report, individual chapters, and interactive timeline are available at the Internet Monitor website.
The Internet Monitor platform is a freely available online fact base that gives policy makers, digital activists, researchers, and user communities an authoritative, independent, and multi-faceted set of quantitative data on the state of the global Internet. The project compiles and curates data from multiple sources, including primary data collected by the Berkman Center and its partners, as well as relevant secondary data. Internet Monitor also provides expert analysis on the state of the global Internet via a special report series and annual reports on notable events and trends in the digital space. The project is funded by the US Department of State and the MacArthur Foundation.
The Internet Monitor team includes Bruce Etling, Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society; Rob Faris, Research Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society; Urs Gasser, Executive Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society; Rebekah Heacock, Senior Project Manager, Berkman Center for Internet & Society; and Jonathan Zittrain, Co-Founder and Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society.