Ethan Zuckerman

“The benefits and consequences of globalization have a great deal to do with whether we're intelligent and thoughtful about how we approach globalization, or whether we're blindly accepting... or blindly resistant.”

“Reddit names are unconnected to real-world identities and it's commonplace for users to create 'throwaway' accounts to reveal sensitive information.”

“Sometimes you need the things you didn't know you needed to know.”

“For countries such as Kenya to emerge as economic powerhouses, they need better infrastructure: roads, ports, smart grids and power plants. Infrastructure is expensive, and takes a long time to build. In the meantime, hackers are building 'grassroots infrastructure,' using the mobile-phone system to build solutions that are ready for market.”

“It's fine to have social media that connects us with old friends, but we need tools that help us discover new people as well.”

“The U.S. media have done a shameful job of reporting on the Arab world.”

“A common language is a first step towards communication across cultural boundaries.”

“I study the ways new media shapes people's perceptions of the world.”

“When I was growing up in the U.S. in the 1970s, 35-40% of an average nightly newscast focused on international stories.”

“When you look at the 'New York Times,' you look at other elite media, what you largely get are pictures of very wealthy nations and the nations we've invaded.”

“The uptake on mobile phones in Africa is phenomenal.”

“I can imagine Iceland becoming a good place to run a controversial Web site. But... Iceland may find itself forced to defend controversial speech.”

“Moments of crisis, like the shooting in Newtown, tend to produce brief spikes of popular interest in gun control. My research on media attention suggests these spikes are extremely short-lived, and that they may be decreasing in intensity.”

“You can make the case that slacktivism is important because it makes people feel affiliated to a movement and be part of it, and talk about it.”

“I can read a lot of French newspapers with Google Translate and have them read quite comfortably.”

“The Internet challenges traditional ways of distributing and processing information and so encourages new standards and behavior.”

“A world where everyone creates content gets confusing pretty quickly without a good search engine.”

“If we need simple narratives so people can amplify and spread them, are we forced to engage only with the simplest of problems?”

“People generally pay attention to what they already know about and what they care about.”

“Reading the text of my blog itself is not really the interesting part. The exciting part is how the Internet allows me to be the eyes and ears for the people sending me postings from Africa.”