2014 Internet Monitor Annual Report: “Reflections on the Digital World”
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University has announced the publication of Internet Monitor 2014: Reflections on the Digital World, their Internet Monitor project’s second annual report. 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.
The publication, 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.
The report 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 just last week. Also included is a “By the Numbers” section that is slightly tongue-in-cheek and offers a look at the year’s important 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 following link on the Internet Monitor website.
About Internet Monitor
Internet Monitor, based at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, is a research project to evaluate, describe, and summarize the means, mechanisms, and extent of Internet content controls and Internet activity around the world. The project compiles and curates data from multiple sources, including primary data collected by the Berkman Center and our partners, as well as relevant secondary data. 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. Internet Monitor also provides expert analysis on the state of the global Internet via our special report series and our annual reports on notable events and trends in the digital space.