Money For Nothing and Your Links For Free
Global Voices, a research website affiliated with Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, is giving away $5,000 "for new media outreach projects. Ideal applicants will present innovative and detailed proposals to teach citizen media techniques to communities that are poorly positioned to discover and take advantage of tools like blogging, video-blogging, and podcasting on their own."
I've been watching the growth of Global Voices for a while and have heard of their trips to the Third World where they are patiently organizing networks of bloggers, some of them to the left of center. Nevertheless, it is an impressive and far-sighted strategy. What they are essentially doing is creating nodes and networks of human sensors and capturing the output on their website. The eventual result will be a huge torrent of information from many places that are not well covered by old journalism. And they will own that stream. One day people will think back on what Global Voices is doing and say, "why didn't I think of that?"
posted by wretchardthecat at 5/31/2007 09:30:00 PM
4 Comments:
"some of them on the left". Is this furtherance of transnational socialism or is it a project that offers the opportunity for all voices to be heard?
tom,
I am basing my observation on the sample of posts I have read. Some posts are obviously from people with Left-leaning inclinations. But I do not mean this as an indictment of Global Voices. If I were doing the same thing I would make sure I got a sampling which reflected the underlying distribution. However, I think that after a while, sites tend to self-select their members not through any formal exclusion but due to atmosphere.
Consider this site. Nobody from Kos is booted off, but maybe the people who read Kos go to Kos.
"However, I think that after a while, sites tend to self-select their members not through any formal exclusion but due to atmosphere."
Unless you happen to be Giuliani supporter over at FreeRepublic, at which point your posting privledges are revoked with no explantion or warning. You are no longer allow to participate in the free flow of ideas and information that the site built its reputation on. Pretty sad state of affairs over FreeRepublic.
very interesting thread,wretchard.
(disappointing it's not getting more traffic...where is Starling David Hunter at??)
ie,put another way:
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what does VOA or Radio Free Europe morph into once the Internet hits the world stage??
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+two-way exchange>>>
+many to many communication.>>>
...circumventing gov't censorship>>>
+Venezuelan Opposition TV station putting it's video newscasts onto YouTube.
+yet Google does the PRC's
censorship scut-work.
"don't be evil".
yeah,right.
Howard Rhiengold has been onto this
online community stuff for quite a few years...read any of his works??
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