Reporters Without Borders has released a Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents.
Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they’re tremendous tools of freedom of expression.
Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest. Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.
(Thanks to Anikó Bartos for the heads up.)
Categories: Books & Literature · New Media · Web/Tech · Weblogs
Rebecca MacKinnon of Global Voices wonders why "the American blogosphere actually talks about less of the world than the mainstream media does."
Why don’t American bloggers link very much to bloggers around the world? People in the room suggested there are 2 main reasons: One reason is that they don’t know where to find the good blogs from other countries – unless Instapundit or somebody has linked to them. Another reason is that people don’t have enough context or knowledge about events going on in foreign countries to blog about them.
Rebecca proposes one solution.
The Global Voices project, with our Index and Aggregator, is trying to provide a solution to the first problem. The other problem has to do with lack of context. How do you get people linking to fascinating posts on Armenian or Bahraini blogs when they have no context about the situations in Armenia and Bahrain? This is more difficult and there are no clear solutions. One idea that came up in the session would be for bloggers who blog for global audiences to provide links on their sites where people can go for more information about their country – and recent news about their country. The GV wiki should probably do a better job in providing links to reliable contextual information.
Some months ago, I similarly asked "why linguistic and cultural barriers exist around still imagery, when" [it seems] it would be a more easily translatable medium." (See "Translating Photography," Parts I, II and III.) Maybe it is time for an art-related, global voices project too?
Categories: New Media · Social Networks · Weblogs
Zoetrope friend Laila Lalami is mentioned in a USA Today (2/16) piece about literary blogs.
The explosion of blogging among book lovers
corresponds with a general rise in the use of blogs among the computer
literate. A recent study by the Pew Foundation finds that 8 million
people have created blogs, a 58% jump in the past year, and about 25%
of all Internet users read them.
The online book media have grown so much that Publishers Weekly,
the book industry’s primary trade magazine, recently replaced its
editor in chief of 12 years, citing the need to revamp the magazine in
light of such competition and to tap into the public’s interest in
reading about books online.
What many blogs do better than the conventional print media is offer a sense of the global literary culture by providing links to foreign book coverage.
Categories: Books & Literature · Weblogs
BloggingSundance reviews a new documentary about the Enron debacle that is showing at the Sundance Film Festival. "
When documentary film, blogs, and journalism are done well, they assist the audience in the search for truth."
Categories: Film & Visual Arts · Finance & Markets · Weblogs
