The attacks in Mumbai on Nov. 26-28 were the kind of an event that arouses a global concern and intense focus that is beyond the ability of traditional media to satisfy. The super-fast, decentralized, open, and flawed new media stepped in. Some huge number of concerned global citizens was tracking ongoing events, rumors, genuine news, and comments on Twitter. There the entire episode unfolded amid the noise.

Here are a few key documents:

• The #mumbai feed on Twitter
• Mumbai: flash mob or social media in action?
• Mumbai: Twitter's Moment - Forbes.com
• Bloggers Provide Raw View Of Mumbai Massacre

In his "Blueprint for Change," U.S. President-elect Barack Obama provided a comprehensive and detailed approach to information technology policy. It hasn't received much attention, but quite a few ambitious initiatives are described there. Some of the key principles the soon-to-be President has pledged to promote:

• protect the openness of the internet
• encourage diversity in media ownership
• create a transparent and connected democracy

These issues don't have the same high profile as taxes and foreign policy. But they are critical to broadening access to information and participation in public life. And the new administration's work in this area needs to be followed just as closely as any other.

Thanks to Michael Cornfield for bringing the Obama/Biden technology proposals to our attention.

Can't make it to the Choices and Challenges forum this Thursday, October 30?  You can still participate online!

We are excited to announce a collaborative effort with IDDL at Virginia Tech which will allow us to carry  "The Shape of Things to Come: Web 2.0" LIVE online.  The event will be led by Jeremy Hunsinger, from 2:30 to 3:45.

Through an online portal called CentraOne, online participants will be able to listen to Jeremy's talk, watch the presentation slides as they are shown live in the room, and even ask questions online.

To join in, go to:

http://centra7.iddl.vt.edu/main/vt/User/GuestAttend.jhtml?s_guid=000000d1ad080000011d0e2a4d8e84f0

All you have to do to participate online is type your email address into the prompt box and download CentraOne (which you will also be prompted to do).

You may simply listen in, and write your questions via a chat system, or you can use a microphone to talk directly to our CentraOne intermediary (Aaron Bond) who will be in the room to relay questions from our online participants. 

This is the fourth podcast in our series. Daniel Breslau speaks with Iranian blogger and blogosphere researcher Arash Kamangir about the reality and potential of blogs as a space for participatory media in Iran.

Schuler, Douglas. 2008. Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Douglas Schuler will be part of the main panel of this year's Choices and Challenges Forum on October 30. See the full schedule.

In Liberating Voices, Douglas Schuler urges us to unleash our collective creativity—social as well as technological—and develop the communication systems that are truly needed.

Based on research of over six years, USIP analysts examine the variety of ways that terrorist have been using the internet. There has been a growing presence of terrorist organizations on the internet, however, their presence remains a "dynamic phenomenon: websites suddenly emerge, frequently modify their formats, and then swiftly disappear—or, in many cases, seem to disappear by changing their online address but retaining much the same content."

Boler, Megan (Ed.). 2008. Digital media and democracy: tactics in hard times. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

This looks like a great collection, with chapters by leading scholars and practitioners. From the blurb:

"In Digital Media and Democracy, leading scholars in media and communication studies, media activists, journalists, and artists explore the contradiction at the heart of the relationship between truth and power today: the fact that the radical democratization of knowledge and multiplication of sources and voices made possible by digital media coexists with the blatant falsification of information by political and corporate powers."

The third podcast in our series is now online. Daniel Breslau talks to Harry Cleaver about how the Zapatista movement has used the internet to link to a wold-wide "alter-globalization" movement.

Antony Lowenstein's new book tells the story of bloggers in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China and Cuba, struggling to create a new space for the unchecked flow of information, often under brutal repression.

Hamid Tehrani interviews Lowenstein about the book, at Global Voices Online.