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At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last month, Lombardi Software’s Barton George did a small video interview with me.

In the first part, I talk about being a Yahoo! Fellow and teaching a course on social media at Georgetown University.

Towards the end of the interview, in response to a question on what excites me most about social media, I talk about social media analytics. I believe that social media analytics is almost like a black hole today. Most business, civil society and government organizations don’t know what to track and measure on social media and how to tie it back to their strategic and tactical metrics. Even if they know what to measure, they find it almost impossible to measure it accurately and extract meaning from it. There is a big open space for someone to establish best practices on social media analytics and then execute it well using a combination of machine and human input.

Thank you, Barton, for doing the interview.

My year of being the 2008-09 Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet at Georgetown University is almost over, and it’s time to give my final talk and submit my final paper.

Georgetown University is hosting an event on April 23, 2009 where I’ll present my research on digital activism in India and China and then moderate a panel consisting of my friends Evgeny Morozov, Ivan Sigal and Trebor Scholz to discuss issues related to international digital activism.

If you are reading my blog, you probably know all three of them, but here are their short bios –

- Evgeny Morozov is a Open Society Fellow and an expert on international digital activism.

- Ivan Sigal is Executive Director of Global Voices.

- Trebor Scholz is professor of media studies at New School University, NY.

In the talk and the panel discussion, we will touch upon case studies of successful digital activism initiatives around the world and outline trends in international digital activism. We will talk about how the nature of digital activism in different countries is shaped by factors like socio-cultural norms, government control and access to technology. We will also discuss the challenges in documenting and making sense of international digital activism initiatives in real time.  Read More

It’s amazing how quickly a year went by.

It seems as if I told you about becoming the 2008-09 Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet at Georgetown University only last week and it’s already time to announce the call for applications for the 2009-10 Yahoo! Fellow.

The Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown University pursues educational and research activities that explore the interplay between international values and new communications technologies, with a focus on BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China.

The projects explore how the use of new communications technologies, like internet and mobile, is shaped by national and socio-cultural context, and how such technologies, in turn, often change that context itself. The projects may also explore how new communications technologies are enabling the formation of virtual public spheres to support human values like democracy, citizenship, freedom of expression and empowerment of disadvantaged communities, but also raising serious questions related to personal privacy, homophily, propaganda and censorship. Projects can draw on insights from many disciplines, including politics, economics, business, and socio-cultural research.

The appointment is for one academic year, from August 15, 2009 to May 15, 2010.  Read More

Here’s the introduction to my Georgetown University course on Social Media in Business, Development, and Government (PDF and PPTX) –

Social media technologies are disrupting power equations between consumers and businesses on one hand and citizens and governments on the other hand, especially in the context of emerging countries. Therefore, it is essential that thinkers and practitioners in the areas of business, development and government understand the use and impact of social media technologies.

Through readings, guest lectures, and case studies, the course will provide students the conceptual understanding of the power and philosophy of social media. The course will specifically focus on how social media is changing media, business, development, and government in fundamental ways, especially in emerging countries in Asia and Africa.

The course will also help students gain practical facility in the use of social media tools. More importantly, students will learn meta skills like how to learn to use new social media tools, how to use filters to make sense of social media, how to curate news and knowledge and how to engage in an online public debate.

Here is a detailed syllabus: Google Docs/ PDF/ DOCX.

Cross-posted at my course blog.

Earlier today, I interviewed South Asia expert Howard B. Schaffer on America’s role in the aftermath of the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack.

Howard B. Schaffer has spent much of his 36-year career dealing with U.S. relations with South Asia, including a stint as ambassador to Bangladesh. He has recently finished writing a book on America’s role in Kashmir, titled ‘The Limits of Influence’, which will be published by the Brookings Institute early next year. He is now the Deputy Director at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.

In a 23 minute interview, we spoke about the history of America’s role in the Indian sub-continent and how it is likely to change in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack.

Ambassador Schaffer believes that we will have a replay of the escalation in tension between India and Pakistan we saw in 2002 after the attack on the Indian parliament and international pressure will mount on Pakistan to take definitive action against Lashkar-e-Taiba. However, given the transitional government in United States, a weak government in Pakistan, and an end of term government in India, no decisive action is likely to be taken by any of the three governments.  Read More

I was quoted today in a story on smart phones in The Hoyas, the Georgetown University newspaper.

The story also had a quote from Cole Brodman, chief technology and innovation officer of T-Mobile USA.

By the way, Nokia should consider all the free publicity I have given to the E71 (see 1, 2 and 3) and hire me for a testimonial TVC.

Here is the full text of the story –

New Phones Make Students Smarter
By Gregg Re | Oct 07 2008

While technology will never render pen and paper extinct, smartphones are becoming more prevalent on campus and Georgetown and its students take advantage of all that the latest technology has to offer.

The devices are so versatile that some are using them as laptop replacements for academic work.
“For almost six weeks, when I was between laptops, my Nokia E71 was my main computing device,” said Gaurav Mishra, the 2008-2009 Yahoo! Fellow in Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.

Smartphones such as the E71 and the G1 feature physical keyboards that can be used for note-taking in addition to text messaging.  Read More

Rob Pongsajapan at The Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) at Georgetown University totally delighted me yesterday by setting up the official “ISD Yahoo! Fellow Blog” within hours of our discussion.

How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies is a group blog co-authored by the 2008-09 Yahoo! Fellows — Ben Turner, Pavneet Singh and myself. We will be writing between 5 to 10 posts every week on how international values apply to the development and use of new communications technologies, especially in BRIC countries. I’ll mostly focus on how social media will be used differently by individuals and institutions in BRIC countries as compared to their first world counterparts, but also riff frequently on the broader theme. Ben and Pavneet will also write mostly about their own research areas (to be announced soon) but also contribute to the bigger conversation on the blog.

From mid-September, we will start a weekly podcast with thinkers and practitioners from the Georgetown University community and beyond on social media in BRIC countries and how to use social media for social change.

In December, we will invite contributions for a crowd-sourced paper (or even a crowd-sourced e-book!) on how global values shape communications technologies.  Read More

It’s week three in Washington DC and I have started my research on the “BRIC Model of Social Media” as the Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown University.

Even as I do my own research, I am endlessly fascinated by my first hand exposure to the use of social media tools in the academic world.

The Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) at Georgetown University — run by Randall Bass and Eddie Maloney — is driving the education 2.0 thinking at Georgetown. CNDLS runs the Digital Commons platform that allows Georgetown students, faculty, and staff to use blogs, wikis, forums, podcasts, portfolios, posters, timelines and dStories for communication and collaboration. The CNDLS team is setting up has already set up the official “ISD Yahoo! Fellowship Blog” over the weekend and I have a few ideas on how to introduce a wiki and a podcast into the mix during the year. dStories, a multimedia authoring tool that allows you to combine texts, images and audio files into a short film clip — or a digital story — can be quite cool too. This gallery of the CNDLS education 2.0 projects gives a sense of what is possible with these tools.  Read More

As the Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown University, I’ll spend the next year studying how social media in BRIC countries will be used differently from the first world countries and the implications this will have on how individuals and institutions in these countries engage with social media.

Inspired by Grant McCracken’s post on how trend-hunting is meaningless unless it is rooted in a deeper understanding of the underlying culture –

it is precisely when “culture above” resonates with the “culture below” that things “take,” that innovation has a chance to transform us in substantial ways.

– I realized that to understand how social media in BRIC countries will be used differently from the first world countries, I first need to understand how social dynamics in these countries differ.

So, as a starting point, I asked myself — and my friends on Twitter — if there are any subcultures in India, like this list of subcultures in the West.

I’m searching for someone who has studied Indian urban culture in detail, maybe done a PhD in it (tweet).

I’m also looking for books on Indian culture like Pavan Varma’s ‘The Great Indian Middle Class’ and Rama Bijapurkar’s ‘We Are Like That Only’ (tweet).  Read More

Quick Summary: I’m totally delighted to announce that I have been selected as the Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet for 2008-09 at Georgetown University.

I’m totally delighted to announce that I have been selected as the Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet for 2008-09 at The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD) associated with The Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS) at Georgetown University.

The fellowship is funded by the $1 million Yahoo! Fund on International Values, Communications Technology & the Global Internet, which was established at Georgetown University by a gift from Yahoo! Inc. There is only one such position open for each academic year and I’m the second Yahoo! Fellow.

The Yahoo! Fellow is chosen from applicants drawn from the government, corporate, non-profit and academic sectors with interest in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Two graduate students from the Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) program at the SFS are also selected to as Junior Yahoo! Fellows to engage in research associated with the Yahoo! Fellow. Part of the research done by the Yahoo! Fellow is also incorporated into the MSFS program as guest lectures, special seminars, case studies and/ or course modules.  Read More