[Air-L] Open Data on Net Neutrality

Seeta Peña Gangadharan seeta.gangadharan at gmail.com
Wed Aug 6 07:22:44 PDT 2014


Thanks Stu for sharing. Very nice.

Made me think back to the media ownership proceedings, too, where we saw
a similar surge of comments from the lay public and FCC reactions. (Not
to mention Sherry Arnstein's work on "participating in participation.")
One of the (diss') interviews I conducted with an FCC staffer back then
seems relevant to the net neutrality proceedings:

" [T]he whole point for us is to try and say, okay, we have, you know,
sixty thousand pieces of paper here, fifty-eight thousand of them
basically say, 'We’re against this because we don’t like this
consolidation, and we want more diversity. We don’t like people to buy
up everything in our   market.' 

But they aren’t usually very deep or analytical or, you know,
substantiated by evidence, documentary or otherwise. They’re usually
expressions of opinion.  And, you know, we take account of those. We
say... there are a whole lot of people who don’t like this. And we would
basically have people look at them to decide that that’s, in fact, what
they were.

Then summarize what they were...there were forty-eight thousand sixty
whatever comments that essentially made the following two points.

And, you know, so it was really a very short summary that you ended up
with."

Seeta Peña Gangadharan



On 8/6/14 9:44 AM, Ian O'Byrne wrote:
> Hi Stu,
>
> Thanks for the quick work on this. I'm spreading it through my social
> networks as we speak. I pulled the link from your blog post to expedite the
> process. For others that are interested...the link is here:
>
> http://blog.texifter.com/index.php/2014/08/06/open-data-on-net-neutrality-help-crowd-source-analysis-of-comments-to-the-fcc/
>
> Please share this far and wide. Great analysis. Thanks again.
> -Ian
>
> _________________________
> W. Ian O'Byrne, Ph.D.
> wiobyrne.com
>
> University of New Haven
> Department of Education
> *"Feet on the Ground and Eyes to the Sky"*
> 300 Boston Post Road
> West Haven, CT  06516
> (203) 479-4272
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 9:00 AM, Shulman, Stu <stu at texifter.com> wrote:
>
>> Yesterday the FCC released the public comments on Net Neutrality:
>>
>> http://www.fcc.gov/files/ecfs/14-28/ecfs-files.htm
>>
>> The FCC has asked the public to help make "visualizations" to help find the
>> substantive comments and surface key themes:
>>
>>
>> http://www.fcc.gov/blog/fcc-makes-open-internet-comments-more-accessible-public
>>
>> Quoting the FCC:
>>
>> "We recognize that not everyone may have the requisite technical skills to
>> build visualizations and analyze raw XML data.  (Members of the public
>> will, of course, still have the option of reviewing and searching the
>> record via ECFS).  However, we’re hoping that those who do have the
>> technical know-how will develop and share these tools for the public to
>> use."
>>
>> Texifter has tools to allow anyone not versed in raw XML extraction to
>> search and code this data, among other things, then export the results as a
>> CSV file, including the relevant metadata. We have loaded the data and
>> started a project using DiscoverText, which was built specifically for
>> crowd-source public comment review by US federal agencies. We invite you to
>> join our collaborative, web-based effort to find substantive comments and
>> visualize what the public said about Net Neutrality. You can work directly
>> with me and others to crowd source the review of the non-duplicate
>> comments, or you can conduct your own parallel project with the same data.
>> To get involved, sign up for the free trial DiscoverText account and note
>> in the comment box that you want to work with the FCC data.
>>
>> https://app.discovertext.com/Home/SignupContactTrial
>>
>> You might be interested in these preliminary stats based on what we
>> downloaded yesterday:
>>
>> + 446,667 items posted to the FCC web site
>> + 300,172 items after de-duplication
>> + The largest group of exact duplicates is 105,320 identical items that
>> say:
>>
>> "Net neutrality is the First Amendment of the Internet, the principle that
>> Internet service providers (ISPs) treat all data equally. As an Internet
>> user, net neutrality is vitally important to me. The FCC should use its
>> Title II authority to protect it. Most Americans have only one choice for
>> truly high speed Internet: their local cable company. This is a political
>> failure, and it is an embarrassment. America deserves competition and
>> choice. Without net neutrality, a bad situation gets even worse. These ISPs
>> will now be able to manipulate our Internet experience by speeding up some
>> services and slowing down others. That kills choice, diversity, and
>> quality. It also causes tremendous economic harm. If ISPs can speed up
>> favored services and slow others, new businesses will no longer be able to
>> rely on a level playing field. When ISPs can slow your site and destroy
>> your business at will, how can any startup attract investors? My friends,
>> family, and I use the Internet for conversation and fun, but also for work
>> and business. When you let ISPs mess with our Internet experience, you are
>> attacking our social lives, our entertainment, and our economic well being.
>> We won'tstand for it. ISPs are opposing Title II so that they can destroy
>> the FCC's net neutrality rules in court. This is the same trick they pulled
>> last time. Please, let's not be fooled again. Title II is the strong,
>> legally sound way to enforce net neutrality. Use it."
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Stuart W. Shulman
>> http://people.umass.edu/stu
>>
>> Founder and CEO, Texifter
>> http://texifter.com
>>
>> LinkedIn
>> http://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartwshulman
>>
>> Twitter
>> https://twitter.com/StuartWShulman
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