FAQ

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Q: What is Global Voices?

Global Voices is an international, volunteer-led project that collects, summarizes, and gives context to some of the best self-published content found on blogs, podcasts, photo sharing sites, and videoblogs from around the world, with a particular emphasis on countries outside of Europe and North America.

Want more details? See our About page.

Q: How did it all start?

The idea came out of a December 2004 one-day blogging conference organized by two Berkman Center research fellows: technologist and Africa expert, Ethan Zuckerman and former CNN Beijing and Tokyo Bureau Chief, Rebecca MacKinnon.

Many attendees – bloggers from around the world – felt there needed to be a community like Global Voices to help bloggers from different countries find each other and engage in a global conversation.

You can read this account of the 2004 conference, or listen to a podcast and hear directly from those who were there.

Q: Who runs Global Voices?

Global Voices is a non-profit project founded at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet's impact on society. It is driven by an editorial team of 17 bloggers from around the world and a group of around 80 volunteer author-bloggers. Take a look at the full list — with photos!

GV is in the process of incorporating itself as an independent non-profit organization.

Q: What are your core values?

Our core values are outlined in the Global Voices Manifesto, a document drafted collectively by participants of the GV 2004 conference and many other bloggers around the world. It has been translated in to several languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Swahili and Spanish.

The Manifesto begins:

We believe in free speech: in protecting the right to speak — and the right to listen. We believe in universal access to the tools of speech.

To that end, we seek to enable everyone who wants to speak to have the means to speak — and everyone who wants to hear that speech, the means to listen to it.

Read the rest here.

Q: What are your ultimate goals?

  1. To amplify the voices of bloggers and content creators often ignored by other media.
  2. To help develop and refine tools and resources that encourage global dialogue and the freedom of online expression.
  3. To advocate against censorship and promote the safety of bloggers who live under autocratic regimes.
  4. To foster diversity and the emergence of new citizens’ voices through training and outreach.

A more detailed list of our goals can be found here.

Q: Who designed the site?

Global Voices Online runs on WordPress, extended by a number of 3rd party and homemade plugins.

The site was designed and implemented by Boris Anthony and Jeremy Clarke, based on extensive dialogue with every level of the Global Voices community and team, from the volunteer contributers, up through the Regional Editors, Managing Editors and Founders.

Q: How do those nifty maps work?

The gorgeous mapping system which now graces the site was developed with the outstanding help of Mike Migurski from Stamen Design and their Modest Maps library. The maps use tiles generated from the excellent open source NASA Blue Marble: Next Generation satellite imagery, as well as outlines and silhouettes generated from freely available shapefiles.

Q: How are you funded?

Global Voices is a non-profit project. A grant from the Open Society Institutes’s Information Program helped us bring international bloggers to our December 2004 meeting. Initial funding to set up the project was provided by grants from the MacArthur Foundation and the Dutch NGO Hivos.

In January 2006 we received an unrestricted grant from Reuters, which enabled us to expand our core editorial team, hire a managing editor, pay for more technical assistance, do more outreach and fund our annual Global Voices conference.

We are also grateful to the Knight Foundation for the $10,000 Knight-Batten “Innovations in Journalism” grand prize awarded to Global Voices in September 2006.

In 2007 we received a further grant from Reuters which will cover our day-to-day operations, and another from Hivos which allowed us to hire an Advocacy Director in February 2007.

Q: What does Reuters get out of your relationship?

Reuters is taking a leadership role in embracing new media to supplement its own old school international coverage. Since partnering with us, Reuters has called on Global Voices’ support and participation in several of their Newsmaker events (For example, U.N. reform and corporate social responsibility). We have also provided them with customized “reblog” feeds for use on special reports pages of their news portal.

More recently, Reuters integrated content from Global Voices into each of the country pages of their groundbreaking Reuters Africa site, which was launched in February 2007 (read our own article about the project here).

We also work with Reuters in various ways, and on an ongoing basis, to help get their staff thinking about how professional journalism should interact with the world of blogs and citizen media.

Q: What’s your relationship with other Mainstream Media?

Positive and mutually beneficial. We look beyond the “journalism versus blogging debate” to find sustainable ways in which both groups can benefit from each other. The blogs whose content we link to and amplify in our Global Links section and longer Weblog feature articles are a rich resource for journalists who wish to find out what ordinary citizens in various countries are talking about. We also offer a customized search engine of the blogs we cover and will soon be launching our own online bridge blog aggregator.

We are frequently approached by media organizations looking to connect with bloggers we have featured on the site. They are often interviewed by professional journalists and establish themselves as reliable sources.

Q: Is your content copyrighted and does anybody have special or exclusive rights to it?

All Global Voices content is published under a Creative Commons attribution license, which means that anybody can re-publish our content as long as they follow the guidelines we lay out in our attribution policy.

We believe that this approach is consistent with our main goal of amplifying the voices of bloggers around the world.

Q: What are your political and religious orientations?

Global Voices strives to be non-partisan and non-denominational. We welcome all people who believe in the importance of protecting and promoting freedom of speech and tolerance. We’re aware that free speech is threatened by a wide range of ideologies and religions in different countries — and that it is also being defended in different ways by people of diverse religions and political persuasions. We don’t care what political party or what religion you belong to if you agree with our core values.

In fact, we are actively seeking participation from those who represent a wide range of political orientations and faiths.

We are, however, against hate. We are against racism and bigotry. And we are against violence and terrorism. We avoid linking to bloggers whose work endorses or reflects these things.

Q: I’m a blogger. How can I get involved?

There are lots of ways you can become involved — they’re outlined in detail on our For Bloggers page.

Q: I’m a journalist. How can Global Voices be useful to me?

We have set up a special guide at our For Journalists page.

Q: You have so much content on your site. How can I keep up with it all?

Reading every post on Global Voices is practically a full time job. If you would like an overview of the feature posts published each day, we recommend that you subscribe to the Global Voices Digest. If you are interested in following a specific country, topic, or region, you can subscribe via RSS at our Feeds page.

Q: Who decides what goes in the Global Links section?

Our team of nine regional blogger-editors from around the world (see the full list here) monitors the blogospheres in their respective regions on a daily basis. Each weekday they each post 5-10 brief entries in the Global Links section of the web site, linking to what they see as the most interesting conversations from the blogs in their regions.

Q: What if I think you missed something important in the day’s Global Links?

If you think any of our editors has missed something important in the Global Links section, please feel free to drop him/her a line. You can do so via our Contact form or by e-mailing them directly — their e-mail addresses are listed here.

Q: What if I want to share my views about some of the items you posted, or some of the blogs you linked to?

We’d love you to - it's only participatory media if you participate! All you need to do is leave a comment in the comments box at the end of the post you wish to discuss.

Q: You made a mistake (e.g. factual error, broken link, wrong link, misspelled someone’s name) — who do I contact to fix it?

We strive to always get things right, but sometimes we need your help. If you spot an error on the site, you can let us know either by posting a comment on the post where you saw the error or by e-mailing us at editor AT globalvoicesonline DOT org.

Q: Why are you writing your email that way?

In a futile attempt to avoid spam from non-humans. DOT = “.” AT = “@”

Q: I wrote a great post in Basque/Kazakh/Mongolian/Fijian that addressed the very issue you were talking about in a post. Why didn’t you link to me?

Unfortunately, our team members don’t speak all of the languages on the planet. (We're working on it.) If you’d like us to link to something that we probably can't read, please translate it into English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Russian or Arabic, and post it on your blog. Then please send us the link at globalvoices DOT dailylinks AT gmail DOT com.

Q: Can anybody post a comment?

Anyone can post a comment on the site. However, we do moderate comments in order to keep out spam, pornography and hateful speech. So please don’t be angry with us if it takes a few hours for your comments to appear – especially if you post your comment when the managing editors are asleep!

Q: Suppose I know of a blog that I think would be perfect for GV. How do I suggest it?

We depend on our readers and others in the international blogging community to help us build an index of the world’s best bridge blogs. You can send us suggestions through the Contact link in the navigation bar.

Q: When you link to something, are you endorsing it?

When we link to something we’re saying: “this is interesting and is worth reading.” We do not have the resources to fact-check every blog post we link to.

We do not believe that any one piece of information or analysis from any single source should be unconditionally believed by the reader (or listener or viewer). This goes for works by professional journalists as well as the work of bloggers. We encourage you to approach all information on all blogs – including Global Voices – with skepticism, until you get to know the background, biases, and inevitable human weaknesses of the people writing the blog.

Also, we often link to viewpoints that we, as individuals, may not agree with. We link to them for the following reasons:

  • We think that a blogger’s viewpoint, analysis or information is useful in understanding how people in that person’s country or community think
  • We think it provides unique information or analysis we haven’t seen anywhere else, which a significant number of Global Voices readers will find interesting or thought-provoking

Q: Have you checked the backgrounds of the bloggers you link to?

Our Regional Editors are people who know the blogospheres in their region very well, and we count on them not to link to people who are dishonest or who spread disinformation. As regards anonymous bloggers to whom we link frequently, it’s usually the case that somebody on our team has established contact with that person and verified his/her identity confidentially. However, everybody makes mistakes from time to time, so please let us know if we have mistakenly linked to wrong information.

Q: What if I discover that you’ve linked to a blog written by somebody who isn’t really who they claim to be?

If we’ve done that, please let us know, either by posting a comment on the relevant post or e-mailing us at editor AT globalvoicesonline DOT org.

Q: Do you link to anonymous blogs? And if so, why?

We do link to anonymous blogs. The reason for this is that in some countries it is very dangerous to speak the truth if you don’t publish anonymously. We encourage bloggers living under regimes that do not respect freedom of speech to use our anonymous blogging guide.

We do try to find out as much as we can about the anonymous bloggers we link to, and sometimes communicate with them privately, in confidence, with the understanding that we will not release their personal information to the public without their permission. If we can verify that the anonymous blogger really is in the country they say they are, this enables us to link more confidently to their material and vouch for its authenticity.

In the case of blogs from democratic countries where the bloggers’ lives and livelihoods are not endangered by speaking their minds, we generally consider anonymous blogs to be less credible. Exceptions to this rule include cases where a bloggers’ employer, for instance, or the topics they discuss, might require them to remain anonymous.

Q: How can I get direct access to the blogs you link to? Is there a directory or index I can use?

Our site is equipped with a powerful search feature that allows you to search:

1) the full web
2) all the content on our web site
3) an index comprising every blog we've ever linked to

This index is based on Google's Co-op Custom Search, and we're pretty proud that we were instrumental in making it an even better product that it was initially (read this post at the Google Custom Search blog to learn how our co-founder, Ethan Zuckerman, helped Google in their quest to improve their Custom Search).

To search this index, make sure the “GlobalVoices Web” button next to the search field is checked, enter your query, click on the search button, and you'll be shown a list of all the Global Voices posts that mention your query text.

Q: Are you endorsing the blogs that you put in your aggregator and customized search engine? How do you choose them?

We put certain blogs in our aggregator because we find it useful to read those blogs on a near-daily basis. So, in a way, we endorse them as interesting. But we are not necessarily endorsing them as authoritative, factually correct or accurate, nor are we endorsing the views held in those blogs.

Blogs make it into the aggregator when:

  • We get an email suggesting we link to a particular blog or blogpost, and we subscribe to its RSS feed
  • We’re researching an area of the globe unfamiliar to us, and we discover new blogs we want to follow

Blogs are most likely to be added to the aggregator if they:

  • Are frequently updated
  • Represent a point of view rarely seen in mainstream North American/European media
  • Are well written
  • Are written in a language our editors and volunteer authors can understand (English, Chinese, Spanish, French, Arabic, Russian or Portuguese)

Q: Why isn’t New Zealand Weasel News (or your blog of choice) included in the Global Voices Aggregator?

There are two possible reasons for this. It’s possible that we don’t know about the blog — in which case you can let us know about it by using our Contact form. It’s also possible that we know about the blog, but don’t feel compelled to read it every day.

In countries where there are lots of bridgebloggers, it would be impossible for us to read all the blogs we know about: we tend to focus on voices we think are especially interesting, underrepresented, entertaining or poignant. We also try to give exposure to new voices.

Q: Why don’t you include U.S. blogs?

Mainly because lots of other sites — BoingBoing, Metafilter, Slashdot, Daily Kos, Powerline — do. You can read those and numerous other sites of their kind if you want to keep up with US politics, technology or other widely blogged-about subjects.

One of the reasons we started the Global Links section was to call attention to voices that are rarely heard in in the mainstream media. It’s our general sense that US politics, perspectives and current events are pretty well represented within the blogosphere and don’t need the promotion Global Voices can offer.

Q: Do you include non-English blogs?

Absolutely. If you search the index of the blogs we link to you’ll find blogs written in dozens of languages. In addition to our Language Editors, we’re lucky to have the help of authors like J. Nambiza Tungaraza who helps us keep track of blogs written in Swahili, and Rezwan, who covers blogs written in Bangla. And we’re always looking for help doing roundups in other languages we don’t speak well.

If you’re fluent in both English and a language we don’t cover well and if you’re doing roundups of blogs in that language, please let us know — we’d love to link to your work.

Q: What about tagging systems? Are you suggesting any del.icio.us or Technorati tags?

We recommend that you use the tag “globalvoices” when tagging a relevant article on your own blog or when bookmarking someone else's post using a service like del.icio.us or ma.gnolia. You can help us out even more by tagging the country or countries discussed in the post. (For example, “globalvoices” and “mexico”)

Q: Does GV link to podcasts?

Our editors frequently highlight podcasts in the Global Links section, and we also produce several podcasts of our own, including a compilation podcast called “The Global Voices Show”, which features excerpts of podcasts from around the world.

You can find all of our podcasts at this page, along with information about subscribing to our podcast feed.

Q: You’re headquartered in the U.S. — what’s your relationship with the U.S. government?

We have no relationship with the U.S. government, other than trying not to violate its laws. We receive no money from the U.S. government or any other government, and have no plans to do so. We receive no instructions from U.S. government officials and do not welcome instructions from any government.

Q: What’s the difference between Global Voices and other grassroots media projects like Indymedia?

We know Indymedia and respect them, but they represent a certain part of the political spectrum. Our goal is to be much more inclusive: we respect and welcome the voices of conservatives, libertarians, liberals, radicals, and all others including those who refuse to be pigeonholed and categorized by political movements.

Q: I have a complaint about the way the site works, and a suggestion to fix it. What should I do?

Please send your suggestions to us at: editor AT globalvoicesonline DOT org.

Q: I’d like to donate funds to help Global Voices grow. How can I do that?

Thanks in advance! We welcome your help. Please email us at: editor AT globalvoicesonline DOT org.

Q: I have other questions. Who do I contact?

Feel free to post a comment at the bottom of this page with your questions. If you’re a member of the press and would like to contact bloggers we’ve linked to or anybody else involved with the project, please email us at editor AT globalvoicesonline DOT org.

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