In The News

To Aim Ads, Web Is Keeping Closer Eye on You

Louise Story April 15, 2008
Computer programs that record, transmit and utilize detailed consumer preferences are in demand. Search engines monitor users’ every click. Even accounts like MySpace and Facebook, which are not search engines, have jumped onto the bandwagon and collect extensive information about their users. Direct advertising is lucrative. While consumers probably prefer seeing ads that interest them than not...

Online Terrorists Prey on the Vulnerable

Gabriel Weimann March 5, 2008
Terrorists rely on state-of-the-art techniques from the advertising industry to attract suicide bombers. Rather than broadcast, or use one big message to attract a huge audience, the extremists “narrowcast,” targeting small groups with specific messages that exploit their vulnerabilities. The internet – anonymous and decentralized, reaching the alienated who desperately seek some inspiration or...

Pakistan Cuts Access to YouTube Worldwide

Brad Stone February 26, 2008
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, troubled by a YouTube video that criticized Islam, took steps to shut down the popular video website in Pakistan. The authority created a dummy site, leading viewers who expected YouTube to a blank site. Such tactics are not unusual in countries that practice censorship, but Pakistan announced its substitution site to a telecommunications partner based in...

Globalization of Soccer Kicks Local Fans

Kanishk Tharoor February 25, 2008
Thousands of years ago, the Chinese, Greeks and Vikings all played games kicking balls about. But the modern game of soccer was born in England and the popularity of that particular sport has taken over the world. Thanks to satellite television, British soccer teams have hundreds of millions of fans all over the world and sport executives look to expand their audiences to more lucrative markets....

Beijing Olympics: Shadow Over a Coming-Out Party

Paul Mooney February 20, 2008
China pursued its bid for the 2008 Olympics to burnish its image as a rising world power, also framing the games as an opportunity to improve human rights and integrate with the rest of the world. The approach of the Summer Games, however, has instead served to showcase China’s poor record on human rights. China has launched a new crackdown on domestic activists in an effort to prevent...

One Thousand Writers, One Flat World

Nayantara Sahgal February 18, 2008
Writers and readers celebrate diversity of voices, settings and stories – and yet that diversity is under attack by two competing sources, explained novelist Nayantara Sahgal in an opinion essay for Outlook India. One is a world of consumer marketing that aims to convince people that there is a best way to look, think or act and the other is religious extremism. “It is the outsider who crosses...

Danish Newspapers Reprint Mohammed Cartoon

Rosalind Ryan February 13, 2008
In 2005, the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark published a set of cartoons, including one of the Prophet Mohammed wearing a turban shaped like a bomb. The cartoons sparked protests and renunciation throughout the Muslim world, while the West defends the right to free speech, no topics off limit. The crisis continues to show how the intentions of any one group often produce the opposite effect...