Person:
Roberts, Harold

Profile Picture

Email Address

AA Acceptance Date

Birth Date

Research Projects

Organizational Units

Job Title

Last Name

Roberts

First Name

Harold

Name

Roberts, Harold

Filters

2009 - 200912010 - 20173

Settings

Author's Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.523ca6f7-5164-4bcb-bc47-135ad6f00ea1

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    Score Another One for the Internet? The Role of the Networked Public Sphere in the U.S. Net Neutrality Policy Debate
    (Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, 2015) Benkler, Yochai; Faris, Robert; Roberts, Harold; Etling, Bruce; Othman, Dalia
    In this paper we study the public debate over net neutrality in the United States from January through November 2014. We compiled, mapped, and analyzed over 16,000 stories published on net neutrality, augmented by data from Twitter, bit.ly, and Google Trends. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines link analysis with qualitative content analysis, we describe the evolution of the debate over time and assess the role, reach, and influence of different media sources and advocacy groups in setting the agenda, framing the debate, and mobilizing collective action. We conclude that a diverse set of actors working in conjunction through the networked public sphere played a central, arguably decisive, role in turning around the Federal Communications Commission policy on net neutrality.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    2010 Circumvention Tool Usage Report
    (2011-12-09) Roberts, Harold; Zuckerman, Ethan; York, Jillian C; Faris, Robert; Palfrey, John
    Circumvention tools allow users to bypass Internet filtering to access content otherwise blocked by governments, workplaces, schools, or even the blocked sites themselves. There are a number of different types of these tools: blocking-resistant tools, simple web proxies, virtual private network (VPN) services, and open HTTP/SOCKS proxies. But every type of circumvention tool provides the same basic functionality — proxying user connections to provide access to otherwise blocked sites. In the following report, we use a variety of methods to evaluate the usage of the first three of these four types of tools to test two hypotheses. First, even though much of the media attention on circumvention tools has been given to a handful of tools — notably Freegate, Ultrasurf, Tor, and Hotspot Shield — we find that these tools represent only a small portion of overall circumvention usage and that the attention paid to these tools has been disproportionate to their usage, especially when compared to the more widely used simple web proxies. Second, even when including the more widely-used simple web proxies, we find that overall usage of circumvention tools is still very small in proportion to the number of Internet users in countries with substantial national Internet filtering.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    2007 Circumvention Landscape Report: Methods, Uses, and Tools
    (Berkman Center for Internet and Society, 2009) Palfrey, John; Roberts, Harold; Zuckerman, Ethan
    As the Internet has exploded over the past fifteen years, recently reaching over a billion users, dozens of national governments from China to Saudi Arabia have tried to control the network by filtering out content objectionable to the countries for any of a number of reasons. A large variety of different projects have developed tools that can be used to circumvent this filtering, allowing people in filtered countries access to otherwise filtered content. In this report, we describe the mechanisms of filtering and circumvention and evaluate ten projects that develop tools that can be used to circumvent filtering: Anonymizer, Ultrareach, DynaWeb Freegate, Circumventor/CGIProxy, Psiphon, Tor, JAP, Coral, and Hamachi. We evaluated these tools in 2007 -- using both tests from within filtered countries and tests within a lab environment -- for their utility, usability, security, promotion, sustainability, and openness. We find that all of the tools use the same basic mechanisms of proxying and encryption but that they differ in their models of hosting proxies. Some tools use proxies that are centrally hosted, others use proxies that are peer hosted, and others use re-routing methods that use a combination of the two. We find that, in general, the tools work in the sense that they allow users to access pages that are otherwise blocked by filtering countries but that performance of the tools is generally poor and that many tools have significant, unreported security vulnerabilities. The report was completed in 2007 and released to a group of private sponsors. Many of the findings of the report are now out of date, but we present them now, as is, because we think that the broad conclusions of the report about these tools remain valid and because we hope that other researchers will benefit from access to the methods used to test the tools. Responses from developers of the tools in question are included in the report.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
    (Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, 2017) Faris, Robert; Roberts, Harold; Etling, Bruce; Bourassa, Nikki; Zuckerman, Ethan; Benkler, Yochai
    In this study, we analyze both mainstream and social media coverage of the 2016 United States presidential election. We document that the majority of mainstream media coverage was negative for both candidates, but largely followed Donald Trump’s agenda: when reporting on Hillary Clinton, coverage primarily focused on the various scandals related to the Clinton Foundation and emails. When focused on Trump, major substantive issues, primarily immigration, were prominent. Indeed, immigration emerged as a central issue in the campaign and served as a defining issue for the Trump campaign. We find that the structure and composition of media on the right and left are quite different. The leading media on the right and left are rooted in different traditions and journalistic practices. On the conservative side, more attention was paid to pro-Trump, highly partisan media outlets. On the liberal side, by contrast, the center of gravity was made up largely of long-standing media organizations steeped in the traditions and practices of objective journalism. Our data supports lines of research on polarization in American politics that focus on the asymmetric patterns between the left and the right, rather than studies that see polarization as a general historical phenomenon, driven by technology or other mechanisms that apply across the partisan divide. The analysis includes the evaluation and mapping of the media landscape from several perspectives and is based on large-scale data collection of media stories published on the web and shared on Twitter.