722 research outputs found
Internet censorship in the European Union
Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit Internetzensur innnerhalb der EU, und hier
insbesondere mit der technischen Umsetzung, das heiĂt mit den angewandten
Sperrmethoden und Filterinfrastrukturen, in verschiedenen EU-LĂ€ndern. Neben
einer Darstellung einiger Methoden und Infrastrukturen wird deren Nutzung zur
Informationskontrolle und die Sperrung des Zugangs zu Websites und anderen im
Internet verfĂŒgbaren Netzdiensten untersucht. Die Arbeit ist in drei Teile
gegliedert. ZunÀchst werden FÀlle von Internetzensur in verschiedenen EU-LÀndern
untersucht, insbesondere in Griechenland, Zypern und Spanien. AnschlieĂend wird
eine neue Testmethodik zur Ermittlung der Zensur mittels einiger Anwendungen,
welche in mobilen Stores erhĂ€ltlich sind, vorgestellt. DarĂŒber hinaus werden
alle 27 EU-LĂ€nder anhand historischer Netzwerkmessungen, die von freiwilligen
Nutzern von OONI aus der ganzen Welt gesammelt wurden, öffentlich zugÀnglichen
Blocklisten der EU-Mitgliedstaaten und Berichten von
Netzwerkregulierungsbehörden im jeweiligen Land analysiert.This is a thesis on Internet censorship in the European Union (EU),
specifically regarding the technical implementation of blocking methodologies
and filtering infrastructure in various EU countries. The analysis examines the
use of this infrastructure for information controls and the blocking of access
to websites and other network services available on the Internet. The thesis
follows a three-part structure. Firstly, it examines the cases of Internet
censorship in various EU countries, specifically Greece, Cyprus, and Spain.
Subsequently, this paper presents a new testing methodology for determining
censorship of mobile store applications. Additionally, it analyzes all 27 EU
countries using historical network measurements collected by Open Observatory
of Network Interference (OONI) volunteers from around the world, publicly
available blocklists used by EU member states, and reports issued by network
regulators in each country
What is Gab: A bastion of free speech or an alt-right echo chamber
H2020 Marie SkĆodowska-Curie Action
Constructing Sexual Fields: Chinese Gay Menâs Dating Practices Among Pluralized Dating Apps
In this study, we draw on sexual field theory to examine the structural nature of metropolitan Chinese gay menâs mobile
dating practices in a polymedia environment where one can access an array of dating apps. We define structures of desire
in the sexual field as not only the transpersonal valuations of desirability but also the dominance of particular desires that
coordinate actorsâ expectations and practices. Based on interviews with 52 urban Chinese gay men, we discuss the differing
structures of desire hosted by four dating apps: Aloha, Blued, Grindr, and Tinder. Our analysis indicates that factors such as
design features of dating apps, marketing strategies of app companies, and internet regulations have shaped the structures
of desire by unevenly distributing the platform access to users across social classes and territorial divisions and (dis)enabling
particular communicative practices in collective sexual life to different extents. The distance-sorted display of nearby users
contributes to the predominance of immediate hook-ups on Blued and Grindr, while the matching mechanism of Aloha and
Tinder functions as a âspeed bumpâ and nourishes usersâ expectations for lasting connections. As Blued is the most popular
gay dating app on the heavily guarded Chinese internet market, the diversity of its users drives away many metropolitan
middle-class gay men who only desire their own kind. In comparison, Aloha, Grindr, and Tinder, with smaller user bases, are
more specialized sexual sites where the dominant currency of sexual capital reflects the form of the middle-class standard
for âquality.
Four$quare: Hybrid Spaces of Economic Activity
The study of cyberspace in geography is not new; however the nature of digital spaces is changing with the development of mobile technology, social media, and location-based media platforms. Much of the content found online is now user-generated and embedded with geographic coordinate information in what is termed the geoweb. While the geoweb provides extensive databases of digital information, it also represents a pivotal shift in the way that digital space is studied by geographers. Online spaces, and especially those spaces created by location-based social media platforms, represent a hybrid space that meshes the physical information of the offline world with the digital information of the online. As a hybrid space, the internet has the power to shape offline places and spaces as well as the individual decisions people make within those locations. Physical spaces as well shape online space through the creation of these forms of location-based social media by recognizing that people are embodied. This dissertation seeks to employ the hybrid nature of online/offline spaces to look at sites of consumption and economic geography. Using data from the location-based social media platform, Foursquare, this dissertation argues that the nature of consumption is changing. While physical storefronts are a necessity for our lives as physical beings, an online presence on location-based social media platforms is needed for economic growth and success. Those offline areas left out of the online discussion due to the digital divide may continue to fall behind
Big Data and International Development: Impacts, Scenarios and Policy Options
Many people are excited about data, particularly when those data are big. Big data, we are told, will be the fuel that drives the next industrial revolution, radically reshaping economic structures, employment patterns and reaching into every aspect of economic and social life.
The numbers are certainly impressive. In 1946, one of the first computers weighed 30 tonnes and could do 500 calculations per second. Today, IBMâs âWatsonâ supercomputer can process 500 gigabytes of data per second. Every day, 39 per cent of the global population use the internet. Facebook has more than 1.3 billion active users, and after the United States the countries with the most subscribers are India, Brazil and Indonesia. In 2007, Twitter had 400,000 tweets per quarter. By 2013, there were 500 million per day. Ninety per cent of data in existence were created in the past two years, and the quantity is doubling every two years. The size and cost of storage has fallen by a third every year since the 1970s, making it possible to store these vast new pools of data. New statistical techniques and tools such as machine-learning algorithms can process and analyse these data dynamically, at a scale and speed that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
These changes are already having major effects and will continue to do so. Beyond that little is clear, however. In the world of data, size obviously matters. But how much will it matter in the end, in what ways will these effects be felt and by whom. Perhaps most importantly, what can be done to influence this?
While considering the potential impacts of big data in a broad sense, this paper applies these questions specifically to developing countries.UK Department for International Developmen
Saudi-Arab Emerging Video Game Cultures, Archetypes, Narratives, and User Experiences
Arab representation in media has been a major focus of many works of renowned scholars, such as Edward Said (1978), Shaheen (2000), Karim (2005) and others. Journalism, film, television, and ancient literature have all been studied in these works. A recent addition to the study of Arab representation is the medium of video games. This was first examined by Reichmuth and Werning (2006) and Machin and Suleiman (2006) and extended by many works that are discussed in this thesis. The vast majority of the literature on Arab representation in video games focuses on Western video games and the reaction of Arab developers to these representations. Lack of specificity is another characteristic of this field. Both characteristics manifest in repeated comparative studies, where scholars select one local culture as an archetype, then embark on a comparative study of the global gaming community. In so doing, there is an unfair generalisation of Arab identity across broad and diverse regions, in terms of ethnic, ideological, national, historical, and even linguistic components. The present investigation critiques the shortcomings of this previous literature, while testing some alternative methods and approaches needed to re-examine the lack of access, language barriers and the aforementioned generalisations that have limited this field until now. Rather than assuming a single archetype for Saudi culture, this thesis departs from previous scholarship by examining the various aspects of the transformation process leading to what could be called an emergent âSaudinessâ.
Specifically, this study examines the construction and depiction of Saudi-Arab identity through the narratives and audiovisual content of video games, paying close attention to recent developments in Saudi cultural and media policy and the mandates set forth by the Vision 2030 development plan (SCEDA, 2016). Using theories on participatory culture (Jenkins, 2009) and spreadable media (Jenkins, Ford, and Green, 2013) as well as a content analysis of previously understudied material shared by a cohort of Saudi gamers, this research investigates the particular markers and strategies used to distinguish the spectrum of cultural aspects and elements with which Saudi gamers identify. To achieve this, the analysis focuses on three distinct archetypes of Saudi Arabs in video games: (a) the Saudis in Western video games, as suggested by previous works; (b) the Saudi citizen archetype, as recommended by state policy; and (c) the Saudi culture, as represented by Saudi gamers and Saudi game producers -- who in many cases reject the idea of a single archetype. In sum, this research sheds new light on the interactions between centralised and decentralised media in Saudi Arabia, as well as the Saudi gamers\u27 sense of agency, demonstrating how Saudis perceive Saudi representations in video games as part of a complex spectrum of interactions within a larger global gaming community
Measuring for privacy: From tracking to cloaking
We rely on various types of online services to access information for different uses, and often provide sensitive information during the interactions with these services. These online services are of different types; e.g. commercial websites (e.g., banking, education, news, shopping, dating, social media), essential websites (e.g., government). Online services are available through websites as well as mobile apps. The growth of web sites, mobile devices and apps that run on those devices, have resulted in the proliferation of online services. This whole ecosystem of online services had created an environment where everyone using it are being tracked. Several past studies have performed privacy measurements to assess the prevalence of tracking in online services. Most of these studies used institutional (i.e., non-residential) resources for their measurements, and lacked global perspective. Tracking on online services and its impact to privacy may differ at various locations. Therefore, to fill in this gap, we perform a privacy measurement study of popular commercial websites, using residential networks from various locations.
Unlike commercial online services, there are different categories (e.g., government, hospital, religion) of essential online services where users do not expect to be tracked. The users of these essential online services often use information of extreme personal and sensitive in nature (e.g., social insurance number, health information, prayer requests/confessions made to a religious minister) when interacting with those services. However, contrary to the expectations of users, these essential services include user tracking capabilities. We built frameworks to perform privacy measurements of these online services (include both web sites and Android apps) that are of different types (i.e., governments, hospitals and religious services in jurisdictions around the world). The instrumented tracking metrics (i.e., stateless, stateful, session replaying) from the privacy measurements of these online services are then analyzed.
Malicious sites (e.g., phishing) mimic online services to deceive users, causing them harm. We found 80% of analyzed malicious sites are cloaked, and not blocked by search engine crawlers. Therefore, sensitive information collected from users through these sites is exposed. In addition, underlying Internet-connected infrastructure (e.g., networked devices such as routers, modems) used by online users, can suffer from security issues due to nonuse of TLS or use of weak SSL/TLS certificates. Such security issues (e.g., spying on a CCTV camera) can compromise data integrity, confidentiality and user privacy.
Overall, we found tracking on commercial websites differ based on the location of corresponding residential users. We also observed widespread use of tracking by commercial trackers, and session replay services that expose sensitive information from essential online services. Sensitive information are also exposed due to vulnerabilities in online services (e.g., Cross Site Scripting). Furthermore, a significant proportion of malicious sites evade detection by security/search engine crawlers, which may make such sites readily available to users. We also detect weaknesses in the TLS ecosystem of Internet-connected infrastructure that supports running these online services. These observations require more research on privacy of online services, as well as information exposure from malicious online services, to understand the significance of privacy issues, and to adopt appropriate mitigation strategies
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