WaPo's Shanghai "Live Discussion" -- a model for Harvard?

The Washington Post online has an excellent resource called "Live Discussions". They are basically moderated online discussions with experts on a variety of subjects. You use a form to submit a question to the expert, and the expert replies (of course, depending on time, expertise, and willingness to respond). Users reload the web page to see the new questions and responses. The Post have been doing these for at least a few years, but have greatly increased production -- there are now several Live Discussions every day.

This morning they had an interesting session with Peter Goodman, the Post's staff writer in Shanghai. I was able to have two questions answered by Peter, the transcript of which I am including below:

Waltham, Mass.: What examples have you observed of Internet communications -- email, websites, discussion forums, etc. -- undermining local, provincial, or central government authority in China?

Thanks, Ian

Peter S. Goodman: Check out my colleage Ed Cody's recent work dissecting peasant revolts, in which he has shown how text messaging on mobile phones has been key in organizing people, with farmers running to confront police as they arrive to break up actions aimed at protecting land against development. In Shanghai, people arguing that they are getting ripped off by developers who have pushed them off land without fair competition have been able to research and organize via Web sites and e-mail. Of course, they also leave a trail that then allows the government to find them and shut down the leaders. This is a key question here: Is technology a tool of subversion or a tool of repression wielded by the state? Obviously, it's both, though I'd argue a little more of the former.

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Waltham, Mass.: I've seen reports of thousands of "mass incidents" across China. Are these mostly taking place in rural or poorer industrial areas, or even in the economically booming areas of the country ... Shanghai, Beijing, Giangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen, etc.?

Peter S. Goodman: They seem to be happening all over, including -- and maybe especially -- in booming coastal areas, where land values are at a premium. Generally, these uprisings are over land use, with local officials turning farm acreage into golf courses, factories, science parks, villas. The villagers, many of whom have seen incomes slip during China's boom, demand compensation or an end to development or a limit to pollution. The local officials keep going and sometimes bring in police or goons for hire to break things up. If the stakes are high enough, things can get very ugly. Again, have a look at Cody's really excellent run of stories on this.

The apparent success of the Washington Post's Live Discussions makes me wonder: Perhaps Harvard could do something like this. The University certainly has the expertise across many subject areas. It already holds lectures and symposia that are open to the public -- why not take it a step further and open up this expertise to a wider online audience? It would be easy to promote it to alumni and members of the community first, and then start publicizing it on the Harvard homepage every week. The online environment isn't that hard to set up, the sessions would only be taking an hour of a professor's time (plus a short training session with the moderator), and they can answer the questions they feel like discussing, while avoiding the cranks or off-topic questions.