The HKS Library’s DVD collection includes award-winning documentaries and movies for your entertainment.  Our films have themes of interest to the HKS community. Topics include human rights, the environment, international relations, global/national political leaders, elections/politics, criminal justice, journalism and international relations. We have a number of foreign language films.

Our most recent DVD purchases are listed at http://www.hks.harvard.edu/library/about/dvd-collection.htm

Our DVD collection is located on shelf next to the HKS Library circulation desk. Movie titles are organized alphabetically. You can also search for movies by conducting an advanced search in HOLLIS and limiting the genre to film and the location to the Kennedy School of Government. Our standard loan period is three days. However, if you check out a movie on December 21, 2012, you can return the movie on January 2, 2013.

Berkman Center for Internet & Society Luncheon Series

Citizen Video & Networked Politics in Southeast Asia

Andrew Lowenthal, EngageMedia

Tuesday, December 4, 12:30 pm
Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor
RSVP required for those attending in person via this form.
This event will be webcast live at 12:30pm ET and archived on our site shortly after

Citizen video in Southeast Asia has exploded in recent times, and has come to play a significant role in national and regional politics. As in other contexts it has documented spectacular events, spearheaded campaigns and uncovered scandals. More broadly citizen media and networked publics are shifting the balance of power both in the media and the political landscape.

Like China and India, ASEAN nations are experiencing rapid growth and the online and citizen media space is only set to grow in media production, audience and importance.

Whilst broadband access in the region is still often constrained to urban areas, citizen video is also being taken up as a political tool from those on the economic and political fringes. Initiatives such as Citizen Journalists Malaysia and EngageMedia are working to develop strategic networks of new citizen video producers.

In this discussion, Andrew Lowenthal, co-founder and Executive Director of EngageMedia, will outline their approach to video4change and their work in the region, in particular looking at West Papua, (a remote region of Indonesia that has been waging an independence campaign for more than 40 years), the development of regional, cross-border and multilingual video networks, and the effect and possibility of the internet and online media to generate new post-national political configurations and collaborations.

Berkman Center for Internet & Society Luncheon Series

Power in Our Hands: Adapting Social Media to Promote Credible Elections in Low Countries

Oluwaseun Odewale, Berkman Center Fellow

December 11, 12:30pm ET
Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor
RSVP required for those attending in person via this form.
This event will be webcast live at 12:30pm ET.

Armed with little more than a modest smartphone (mostly even ordinary phones) and an Internet subscription that will permit only a fair access to the mobile GPRS/EDGE, Nigerian young people went into the 2011 elections with a new wave of enthusiasm and interest.

This was the fourth consecutive elections since the reemergence of democratic governance in 1999. And until then [2011], none of the previous elections received positive review in the aspect of credibility – or freeness, or fairness. Now, with the appointment of a new leadership and growing influence of technology in fostering more accountable processes, Nigerians optimistically anticipated a marked improvement in the April 2011 elections over past discredited experiences.

It is even more significant that more attention were paid to the 2011 elections as it portended to be the most expensive electoral experience for Nigerians. A leadership change had recently been effected in a tensed political climate and the elections management body (EMB) had set a plan for the costliest elections ever.

In light of the renewed hope and confidence, and the desire to get things right, several civil society organizations established election monitoring platforms via SMS, twitter, websites, blogs, facebook, telephone lines etc. One particular organization recruited volunteers and got itself embedded within the INEC systems to promote a “two-way communication between INEC and its stakeholders”.

What evolved was a media-tracking centre established to assess the robust blend of traditional and new media during the election period. It was an interesting trend to see how social media, for the first time, was adopted and, quite interestingly, adapted, to ensure credibility of the electoral process.

During this presentation, I intend to showcase the Nigeria experience, highlight what worked and what didn’t; specific instances of how social media interventions prevented rigging; how the elections has helped the growth of use of social media, the patterns of usage during and after the elections; and, how traditional media has adjusted to social media practice.

I hope the audience will share their experiences and proffer recommendations to revamp the innovation for a more institutionalized adaptation in promoting good governance in Nigeria, as I continue to explore this in my present research work.

See Journalist’s Resource‘s excellent  Voting, polling problems and media coverage on Election Day: Research Roundup for reports and studies relavent to next week’s election.

Election 2012 Collaborative Web Archive Collection is a collaborative project of the Library of Congress, the California Digital Library, the University of North Texas Libraries, the Internet Archive and Harvard Library to collect and preserve web sites related to the United States 2012 election campaign. The HKS Library is focusing on adding websites that are produced by non-profit organizations, academic institutions, fact checking organizations, and individuals.

We welcome you to submit your nominations to the Election 2012 Collaborative Web Archive Collection at http://digital2.library.unt.edu/nomination/election2012/add/.

Please contact Keely Wilczek at keely_wilczek@hks.harvard.edu with any questions.

If you’re interested in what everyone else is thinking about the candidates, the parties, and the issues, visit these recommended resources:

PEW Research Center – Election 2012 Publications and People and the Press

Roper Center for Public Opinion - Under Hot Topics – Presidency (login with Harvard ID & PIN)

Gallup - Election 2012

The Polling Report – pollingreport.com

Huffington Post – Pollster

For suggestions for other sources of public opinion, see our Public Opinion Research Guide.

From October 22 through October 28, Harvard University is joining hundreds of other institutions of higher learning to celebrate Open Access Week, a global event for the promotion of free, immediate online access to scholarly research. Read more…

The HKS Library now provides access to The Review of Faith & International Affairs. Access to this peer-reviewed journal is available from 2003 to the present.

From the Publisher:  The Review of Faith & International Affairs is a quarterly journal dedicated to providing analysis and commentary regarding the role of religion – for good or ill – in global affairs. The Review of Faith & International Affairs brings together many of today’s most innovative and distinguished thinkers, making their research and commentaries available not just to specialists but to a wider audience of globally concerned readers. It is published out of the Center on Faith & International Affairs (CFIA) at the Institute for Global Engagement.

The HKS Library now provides access to the Journal of Political Marketing. Access to this peer-reviewed journal is available from 2002 to the present.

From the Publisher: The Journal of Political Marketing is vital reading for politicians and candidates at every level of office as well as political party officials, political consultants, corporate lobbyists, pollsters, media specialists, journalists, and students and educators in these and related fields. In comparison to competing publications, this journal puts exciting articles with a high level of sophistication and detail in your hands, keeping you on top of current developments in political marketing and campaign strategy. The journal’s focus includes current and predicted future trends such as the application of Internet marketing techniques to politics, which may be at the forefront of future politics around the world.

The HKS Library now provides access to the Representation. Access to this peer-reviewed journal is available from 1960 to the present.

From the Publisher:

Representation – the journal of representative democracy – has the following aims:-

• To continue to publish cutting edge articles about the study of elections and voting systems throughout the world.
• To encourage debate on democrat practices around the world.
• To critically explore the interface between democratic practice and theory.
• To produce special issues devoted to questions of democracy and representation; whether they be in a single- country or region, or across a wider subject such as representation of minorities.
• To attract an audience of academics and students, journalists, election practitioners and all those interested in the nature of representative democracy including informed lay readers.