Berkeley China Internet Project

The Berkeley China Internet Project of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism is a good project for students of Chinese Media to keep an eye on. It's stated goals are ambitious:

"To explore interactive digital media and communication technologies in order to advance the world's understanding of China, and to promote the knowledge, culture and social practices of those technologies which will facilitate China's democratic transition, sustainable development and peaceful emergence in the global community." (website)

The activities of BCIP are centered around the development of a participatory media website, China Digital Times, a collaborative news website covering China’s social and political issues. It aggregates up-to-the-minute news and analysis about China from around the Web, in addition to providing independent reporting, translations from Chinese cyberspace, and perspectives from around the world.

BCIP focuses on two other initiatives, China Digital Pulse, which publishes on, among other subjects, the rise of participatory media in Chinese cyberspace and its effects on politics, and politics, and China Digital Future which offers "classes, forecasting exercises and a virtual community focusing on the interplay of participatory media, collective action and China's democratic transition." (website)

Data Mashup Resources for Washington Watchdogs

Wired Magazine's Web Mashups Turn Citizens Into Washington's Newest Watchdogs, by Michael Calore, discusses a recent phenomenon of political participation and the web resources that make it possible by "increasingly giving ordinary citizens the ability to easily document the flow of special-interest money and how it influences the legislature." Sites such as MapLight.org, Opensecrets.org and Follow the Money, along with wiki-based political reporting resources like Congresspedia, are empowering citizens to assemble "custom data mashups that use public databases to draw correlations between every vote cast and every dollar spent in Washington."