Global Voices Online

Stories

February 27th, 2007

Meet Sami Ben Gharbia, Global Voices' new Advocacy Director

Rachel Rawlins · 16:52 ·

Global Voices is delighted to announce the appointment of Sami Ben Gharbia as Advocacy Director, and the attentive reader will already have noticed his posts on anti-censorship and free-speech issues.

Sami Ben Gharbia
Sami pictured next to a free-speech campaign slogan

Sami is an experienced human rights campaigner, a Tunisian who has lived in exile in the Netherlands for the past seven years. He first joined the GV community as a result of the comments thread when we featured his Tunisia Prison Map back in September 2006. This innovative and exciting mashup of different digital media and tools subsequently gained much attention in the media.

The aim of this new position is to allow Global Voices to act as a hub for communication between different anti-censorship and free speech initiatives around the world. It is the second “leg” of the GV “tripod” of amplification, advocacy and outreach.

To find out more about Sami's history, journey to this position and vision for the future, community member Mary Joyce put the following questions to him by e-mail:

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February 21st, 2007

World, meet Africa! A new way of reporting the continent

Rachel Rawlins · 21:15 · Sub-Saharan Africa

lingua → zhs

It's frequently depressing reading accounts of Africa in the mainstream media. Doubly so, in fact. Firstly because what is defined as worthy of reporting is, well, depressing. And secondly because it so seldom engages with the complex and vibrant reality of the continent in all its massive diversity, preferring instead to deal in simplistic stereotypes.

That's why today's launch of a new website from global news organisation Reuters devoted exclusively to the continent - Reuters Africa - is so exciting. And most exciting of all is the inclusion of blogs on every individual country page on the site.

In the screenshot below of the site's page for Uganda you can see, to the right of the map, a section headed “BLOGS”. Below it are links to the most recent entries on Uganda from Global Voices. There is a similar feed for each of the more than 50 countries on the continent.

Screenshot of Reuters Africa page on Uganda

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10 comments · »»

December 11th, 2006

Global Voices Delhi summit - only a few days to go!

Rachel Rawlins · 19:29 ·

The last details are being put together for the Global Voices annual summit being held in Delhi on Saturday 16 December. But the physical location shouldn't make a difference - please join us online from wherever you are! You can join via Internet Relay Chat (IRC). The IRC address is irc.freenode.net/#globalvoices and there are instructions about how to join an IRC chat-room here. Alternatively you can just click on our browser-based web chat link. All the day's events will be available to listen to live via streaming audio, and the link to that will be posted nearer the time.

We are building up a number of linked resource pages about the summit on the Global Voices wiki which will be available from this central page. It will include feeds of material written about the summit as long as it has been tagged with the summit tag: gvdelhi2006. Please, if you blog / write / take pictures / record audio or video or otherwise generate content about the summit don't forget to tag it so your views will be more easily found and more widely distributed.

So what exactly are we going to discuss? The major themes this year are activism and outreach: we want to look at the best ways of bringing more voices into the global conversation and explore new and better ways to amplify them. The packed programme is laid out below. (Please note that all times are local Delhi times (UTC +5 hours 30 mins). There's a useful form where you can enter the time in Delhi, click the button and it gives you the corresponding time in a large number of other locations around the world.)

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3 comments · »»

September 19th, 2006

East Asia

Rumors of a coup had been circulating in Bangkok for weeks, and foreigners like me had been ‘warned’ to be careful, don’t stay out late, move in groups, keep updated with news reports, watch the cable TV.

So when it happened last night (Tuesday, Sept 19), I was hardly surprise. Nevertheless, I was excited. I have never experienced a coup before and I wanted to be in the thick of things.

When I heard about the coup, it was already past 10pm, and I had just returned to my apartment after dinner. I tried to get a taxi to where the action is: the government house. But no taxi seem to want to ferry me there.

So begins a spirited account of the day's activities by blogger Susan Loone in Bangkok, the latest in a series of entries on the unfolding coup in Thailand.

Thailand: Liveblogging the coup

Rachel Rawlins · 16:05 · East Asia

At least two blogs have been set up solely to cover the unfolding military coup in Thailand - a group blog 19sep which is in English and revolution.blogrevo which is in Thai.

Video copies of coup-related announcements are appearing on YouTube. Below is the first televised announcement of the take-over by the military.

There's also a capture of the televised announcement of the “first and second orders of the Democratic Reform Coucil”, a previously unknow organisation and the name used by the military who have taken control of Bangkok.

A search on the photo-sharing website flickr on the keyword “coup” brings up nearly 100 pictures from Thailand posted within the last 24 hours from pictures of the army in position round the streets of Bangkok…

[Picture by goshen42]

…to visual evidence of the blocking of foreign cable TV channels

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12 comments · »»

September 18th, 2006

Knight-Batten Awards: And the winner is…..

Rachel Rawlins · 12:30 ·

It was appropriate that, for an award given for innovations in journalism, overseen by J-Lab (the Institute of Interactive Journalism at the University of Maryland), the news came from my colleague Georgia Popplewell at the ceremony in Washington DC via instant message to London and from there out to the Global Voices community across the world via e-mail.

Global Voices Online is the winner of the Grand Prize at the 2006 Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism. These awards:

spotlight news and information that is more than multimedia journalism. They reward novel efforts to involve citizens actively in public issues, to invite their participation and create entry points that stir their imagination and engagement. Honored are pioneering approaches to journalism that spur non-traditional interactions and that have an impact on a community.

In the case of Global Voices I think it's fair to say that the project is the community.

The judges said Global Voices is “an extraordinary site that allows for both editorial gatekeeping and wide access to news and information from underreported parts of the world“, and they also credited the writers with helping to elevate standards in the blogosphere.

This is a huge tribute to every single person involved in the Global Voices project.

Congratulations!

We were represented at the ceremony by the “GV-3″ - (from left to right) Rebecca MacKinnon, Georgia Popplewell and Alice Backer.

For further information:

Georgia liveblogged from the ceremony for as long as the internet connection held out.
Extensive details of the award, our application and selection as a finalist are in this earlier post announcing our gaining a place in the final selection.
There is a press release from the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society.
And here is the press release from J-Lab announcing the award.

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September 15th, 2006

The world is talking - we're listening

Rachel Rawlins · 15:12 ·

Global Voices has grown dramatically over the past year thanks to our fantastic community of authors, supporters, editors and readers. We're working hard to make sure that the site is arranged in the best way possible - what we cover, how we do it and you read it.

So please - help us by answering our quick survey. Just click on the badge abovel It shouldn't take more than about five minutes to complete and all the information will help steer our future direction. And if you don't have time right now come back when you do - the badge and link will be in the sidebar for some time to give as many people as possible a chance to respond.

Thanks very much indeed -

The Global Voices Team

3 comments · »»

September 12th, 2006

Five years on from 9/11, the world remembers

Rachel Rawlins · 18:50 · Americas , East Asia , Middle East & North Africa , South Asia , Sub-Saharan Africa

The mainstream media in many countries have been preoccupied with events in the United States to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon on 9/11 2001. But the repercussions of these events have spread across the globe and people far beyond New York and Washington. Here the Global Voices team has gathered together a sample of citizens' voices marking the anniversary.

We have samples of opinion from regions across the world (click on the link to go directly to individual sections): Africa, China, South East Asia, South Asia, the Americas and French language blogs as well as the Middle East.

We'll start in Africa where kenyanentrepreneur dives in to the most obvious consequence, the US invasion of Iraq, in her post Remembering 9/11:

It's amazing watching all the coverage about 9/11. I have yet to see any mention of the 100,000 innocent Iraqi civillians who have been killed in a war that George Bush started using false pretenses.

WMD's - none have been found

Sadam's links to 9/11 - Bush now says there were no links

Now, we are told the goal was to bring democracy to the Middle East. Let's see - you illegally invade a sovereign nation that has not attacked you, in total contravention of international law.. then, you turn around and claim that you are now going to impose the rule of law & democracy on the country that you have illegally invaded!!

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4 comments · »»

July 10th, 2006

Children in crises and the role of reporters - tell the media what you think

Rachel Rawlins · 19:50 ·

Where is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child? This is the question asked in a poll by AlertNet, the early warning network for humanitarian organisations, to highlight some of the world's forgotten crises.

The results will be featured in a debate about the responsibility of the media to cover “forgotten crises” and how best to do it. Why do some emergencies receive more coverage than others? And do children in risky situations get fair representation in the mainstream media?

The role of bloggers

Global Voices readers and writers are all invited to take part too, as members of the new media landscape of citizen journalism as well as critical consumers of the mainstream media.

The speakers will be in London but anyone with an internet connection can take part too. The debate will be streamed on live audio here, and all those interested can contribute to the discussion via IRC (internet relay chat) using the instructions on the live event internet page.

Both our South Asia editor, Neha Viswanathan and I shall be at the debate putting questions and contributions from the Global Voices community to the panel. The debate is due to start at 1400 UCT/GMT.

This is the first event in a new AlertNet initiative, its Media Bridge which is aimed at improving media coverage of humanitarian crises.

So how would you answer the question “where is the most dangerous place to be a child?”

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2 comments · »»

June 21st, 2006

Middle East & North Africa

At Iraq Blog Count a group of contributors keep a tally of, yes, you've guessed it, blogs in Iraq. The latest addition, Baghdad Chronicle, gets a rave review:

Woah, I don't know how this one slipped through IBC's collective radar. Miraj has been blogging since January and the blog description is simply “The detailed daily events of a Baghdadi woman”. But no, it's more than that, much more than that. Its touching, personal, gripping, exciting. Her writing style keeps you on the edge of your seat. In a word brilliant.