During the Feb. 16 Liberation Technology Seminar, five teams from Stanford University’s John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship program shared their ideas on using technology to push the boundaries of journalism. The first speaker,Girma Fantaye, is an Ethiopian journalist in exile. Ethiopia leads the world in the number of refugee reporters (79 fled the country between 2001 and 2011). Under the context where print journalism is unable to function independently, Fantaye is attempting to create an online journal that will provide critical coverage of the nation’s politics. He discussed the various challenges involved in such a project and why it has promise in repressive environments.

Deepa Fernandes and Michelle Holmes presented Illumin.us, a project that aims to empower non-professional journalists to create compelling news stories for the media. Mobile technologies have enabled average citizens to gather powerful stories and democratize the process of choosing which stories get told. Today, anyone can create breaking news. While the tools for production are widely available, a lot of coverage is of poor quality due to the lack of journalistic training. To combat this, the Illumin.us team is creating a mobile “pocket coach” to help anyone who wants to tell a story. The app will contain the basic tools and tips for capturing news and will be available to the curators of news. It will encourage people to use their own mobile devices to report anything from breaking news to simple stories worth sharing.

Martyn Williams then discussed his project to protect sources in an online environment. A few decades ago, newspapers went to great lengths to keep the identities of their journalists secret. Today, TV stations rely heavily on user submitted content online that is vulnerable to government surveillance. Williams’ goal is to use cheap and open source technologies to ensure that those submitting to news organizations are safe and accredited.

Djordje Padejski and T. Christian Miller are working on a freedom of information platform that will enable investigative journalists to access government information legally from any country with The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) type law. They argued that much of the information provided by Wiki leaks could be legally obtained through FOIA and other “Right to Know” laws, but there is no easy mechanism through which journalists can access public records internationally. Padejski and Miller’s project—the FOIA machine—would facilitate the usage of these under-utilized access laws. By automating the process, they hope to decrease bureaucracy, time and legal constraints. The FOIA machine will even target transnational issues by appealing to multiple governments’ records, revealing dissonance and promoting accuracy.

Emad Mekay from Egypt, discussed using technology to share government information from the U.S. with newspapers in the Middle East and North Africa. After covering the Arab Spring, he came to Stanford to work on projects to help the Arab media. Impressed by the openness of information in the U.S., Mekay came up with a plan to create an online news agency, using U.S. information technology and Freedom of Information laws to make Arab regimes more accountable and U.S. policy in the Middle East more transparent. The agency will act as a foreign correspondent for media outlets in the Middle East with a focus on getting news about the Middle East and North Africa region available in official sources in the U.S.

Kathleen Reen, vice president for Asia and New Media programs at Internews, delivered the Feb. 9 Liberation Technology Seminar on the topic of "Strategies and Support for a Global Open Internet." Internews is an international non-profit organization, which pushes the boundaries of independent journalism, empowering media and providing uncensored news and information worldwide. The organization works with independent media outlets to make tools from the bleeding edge of human rights activism more widely available.

In her talk, Reen stressed that the problem of digital safety has become mainstream. Issues of Internet security, including malware and phishing expeditions, have infiltrated civil society. In response, Internews has created tech leaderships to teach the basics of safe computing, and to encourage awareness and participation. Internews has teamed up with ad agencies to make security tools available in countries experiencing heavy Internet censorship. Reen's talk highlighted the importance of investing in development platforms and data integrity to keep these tools effective and safe.

Reen then turned to the American experience of the Internet. The question of how much the U.S. government will continue to control the Internet is hotly debated. Alternative theories for Internet governance have been submitted to the U.N., some advocating for separate, nationally led Internets. Reen called attention to the extreme vulnerability of the American experience of the Internet, including the ability to earn livelihood online and to access uncensored data. Reen encouraged the audience to engage in these critical discussions to think twice about aspects of the American Internet experience that are unique and in peril.

On Jan. 19, David Wolman contributing editor to Wired magazine, presented his new book The Instigators about Egypt’s youth activists at the Liberation Technology Seminar Series. Wolman tracks the story of a few young activists in Egypt whose efforts turned significant a year later in Egypt’s revolution. The book presents a detailed account of the April 6 movement and the founders of the Facebook page, “We are all Khaled Said” and their use of online tools in Egypt’s revolution.

Wolman made his first visit to Egypt when the movement was small and the protests led by the April 6 movement garnered only a few supporters. He then tracked how the movement gathered steam particularly with the use of online tools. The talk was a vivid account of how the Internet was used to reach young people and convert the collective anger into action. Wolman touched on how those who were tech-savvy combined forces with those who had the experience of mobilization in the lead up to the revolution.

Rebecca MacKinnon, the Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, delivered the inaugural lecture for the Liberation Technology Seminar Series on Jan. 12 on the topic of Internet freedom and governance. She discussed her new book, Consent of the Networked, where she argues the need to go beyond the issue of whether internet is a positive or a negative force for democracy, and for focusing on regulating technology in constructive ways.

Recognizing that the Internet is a multi-stakeholder environment, she argued for pragmatic engagement with a variety of players including governments and large intermediary services. MacKinnon encourages the “network” to assert their rights in cyberspace both by seeking to redefine the legal space and through constructive engagement with private players who own the space in which a large volume of public discourse takes place today. In the process, she took us through recent debates on Internet governance globally and discussed examples of how the space is being shaped actively by governments around the world with enormous consequences for democracy.