Social Science Sites of the Week
London Conference on Somalia
The UK will host the London conference on Somalia on 23 February. It will involve a number of governments along with the United Nations, African Union, European Union, World Bank, the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development, the Organisation of Islamic Conference, and the League of Arab States with the aim of presenting a communique of practical actions to aid the region. The FCO website has details and lists of attendees. Also is useful the blog from special representative Matt Baugh which has comment from a British diplomatic perspective.
Al-Jazeera has some comment on the aims and possibility of success of the conference
Marreg.com distributes some news from and about the Somali community. News analysis is also on All.Africa.com And IRIN. Chatham House website has an expert comment plus report from earlier meetings with Somali nationals.
Other useful websites for background on the situation include Relief web which has the recent communique from the International Contact Group (ICG) on Somalia
African Union Mission in Somalia United Nations Humanitarian Affairs has maps and detailed situation reports of conditions.
On a related theme also recently launched the Somalia Speaks initiative.See this news flash
Somalia Speaks is a collaboration between Souktel, a Palestinian-based organization providing SMS messaging services, Ushahidi, Al Jazeera, Crowdflower, and the African Diaspora Institute. It hopes to increase access to voices from the region by enabling residents to send messages from SMS this is then displayed on a map. The messages are translated into English. They are pinpointed by region and also accessible by general topic.Economic, political , social.
UN Pulse from U.N. Dag Hammarskjöld Library Moves to new location.
Get the rss feed from http://un-library.tumblr.com/rssIf you have not used it before it is an excellent current awareness source for highlighting the latest United Nations documents.
Key features of the library website also include: include a un documentation guide which explains the symbols used in UN documents.
Deutschlandfunk 50(DLF)
is a German public broadcasting radio station. It Commemorates 50 years with a conference considering Politik. Medien. Öffentlichkeit. Does journalism/ Media still cover politics well in the digital age? Does it still have a role to play? The website has information, blog postings and some archived resources. The latter include:
Audiofiles of discussion in German of Wikieconomics and crowd sourcing./
discussion of the Arab spring.
US election sites this week.Pew Forum on Religion and Public life now has a site with news and comment on the role of religion in the 2012 presidential election.
Also released is a database provided by California Watch and the Center for Investigative Reporting which forms part of their Money and politics data center. See who’s donating to super PACs Data center http://californiawatch.org/datacenter/money-and-politics
For a useful snapshot of how the internet is changing voter behaviour see this recent Google blog post.
Measuring anti-Muslim Attacks Project, (MAMA Project).
Faith Matters (Uk based NGO ) launch the Measuring anti-Muslim Attacks Project, (MAMA Project).This aims to map and support victims of attacks.
Other useful sites for tracing projects, news and reports on race and islamophobia in the Uk include the Runnymede Trust And the Institute of Race Relations. For example see this recent publication. Voices against Islamophobia European Race audit briefing papers.
What do people really need to know about the Internet?
Listen to an audiofile of this recent lecture from Professor John Naughton which took place at the LSE on the 25th January 2012.
The speaker is also known as an Observer contributor .It discusses issues relating to the development and impact of the Internet.
Other LSE podcasts and lectures can be accessed via the main lse website
Other recent titles include: the Greek bailout and the future of the European Union.
Another really good source is the Backdoor Publishing Company. See this recent example
Developing Your Research Career – Getting Journal Articles Published
From Birkbeck college. Other recent examples include: Being-In-Human: The Critical Theory and Law of Human Rights
(A conference supported by The Leverhulme Trust, Birkbeck School of Law, LSE Department of Law and Birkbeck Institute of the Humanities)
/ Topics include: philosophy, literature, law and politics. Ted talks on politics, business.
Data driven journalism
Useful site maintained by the European Journalism Centre (EJC) with partial funding from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.
It aims to gather together in one place news stories, case studies, tutorials covering the use of data (including data visualizations) by journalists. For example see this report of this recent conference
Open data Londonwhich unveiled a number of new exciting projects.
Ideal homes: Exploring the origins and significance of suburbia as revealed through the history of South East London
Really interesting site created and maintained by designed and produced by the University of Greenwich. Its content was provided by a group of librarians, from London’s Boroughs: Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark also including citizen contributions.
Case studies include Blackheath, working class housing in Deptford, the entries include articles, and historic maps and images. Fascinating for social and urban history.
Gateway
This project is co-funded by the European Commission and the United Nations Development Programme. It aims to provide a set of tools to aid project developers to help them assess and choose tools for corruption assessments. Over 300 tools to diagnose and analyse corruption are currently indexed. In this context a tool is defined on the website as ‘any research methodology whose primary aim is to identify the extent of corruption, corruption risks, and/or anti-corruption (integrity, transparency, accountability) in a given context’. It is possible to search tools for nation./ international analysis. Or by type of corruption e.g. government, businessEach record details the methodology, coverage and then links through to its website. In many cases reports based on the tool can then be downloaded.
GALA games and learning alliance.
EU funded project examining and building expertise in the use of games for serious educational learning. Led by ELIOS Lab – University of Genoa
Site currently includes project information and news. There is also an interesting blog which highlighted news and events.
