Stories about Feature from May, 2009
Video Interview With Gaurav Mishra About Digital Activism and Social Media in India
In this video I interviewed, Gaurav Mishra, our colleague at Global Voices and the 2008-09 Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet at Georgetown University, about the role of social media and digital activism in India. From the right-wing Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena's Orkut Campaign to the more liberal Pink Chaddi Facebook Campaign, Gaurav explores in this interview how problems of religious conflicts are being reflected online, in a country where caste, class and religious divides remain very strong despite the secular nature of the state.
Tunisia: First Woman to Get Six Years Prison For Her Online Activities
On Thursday 14 May 2009, the 5th Criminal Chamber of the Court of First Instance in Tunis convicted the 22-year old ICT Student, Mariam Zouaghi, who was in custody, on separate terrorist-related charges, and sentenced her to six years in prison. Mariam Zouaghi is the first Tunisian woman to be convicted under The Anti-Terrorism Act of 10 December 2003.
Egyptian Blogger to Pay a Heavy Fine For Reporting On Environmental Pollution
The Egyptian blogger Tamer Mabrouk was punished yesterday, not by being sent to a prison cell, but was fined L.E. 2500 (446 USD), and civil compensation of L.E. 40.000 (7272 USD). A Court of Appeal in Port Said (Suez Canal) upheld the decision to sentence the blog Al-Hakika Al-Mesreyya (The Egyptian Truth) to a fine for Trust Chemical inc., which has filed a Libel and Slander case against Mabrouk in June 2008.
China: June 4th related system maintenance
As the 20th anniversary of June 4th incident is approaching, university aggregated forums (貼巴） at Baidu (a major search engine and portal site in China), have been suspended. Users cannot create new posts and cannot post comments since May 23th. According to the official notice of Baidu, the reason for...
Malaysia: Proposal to register bloggers
Recent news reports state that Information, Communications and Culture Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim, announced that bloggers using locally hosted websites may be required to register with the authorities. According to Rais, registration was one of the measures the government was considering to prevent the spread of “negative” or “malicious content”...
China: Yunan web moderators’ disobedient act
In order to control online content and channel public opinion, local information ministry and propaganda department give daily instructions to webmasters and moderators of forums and portal websites to promote certain news and to delete certain posts. Recently, a number of forum moderators and webmasters from Yunnan province jointly refused...
Egypt: A Blogger is Behind Bars Because of “Exploiting The Democratic Climate”
After being detained for 15 days under investigation, the Egyptian blogger Ahmed Mohsen is to still imprisoned, as he is accused of "Exploiting the democratic climate to overthrow the government". Mohsen was arrested on April 29th, 2009, after a State Security force broke into his house in Fayoum govern-ate (North) and searched it.
Tunisia: Ammar 404 is Back and Censoring Blogs Again
After a short hiatus, the dreaded Ammar 404 has once again attacked the Tunisian blogosphere. Ammar is the nickname given by Tunisian bloggers to the censorship machine plaguing their access to the Internet and his victim this time is Zig Zag blog by 3amrouch. Tunisian bloggers show solidarity with their colleague by reprinting the material which blocked his blog in the first place.
Case Study: The Report Card on Vote Report India Version 1.0
The 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections have come to an end and so has version 1.0 of Vote Report India. We have had our successes and failures and I have talked about some of them before. I think we did a lot of things well – - We were able...
Help Global Voices Advocacy win $3000 by writing one post
Help Global Voices Advocacy win $3000! The prize money would help us continue to raise awareness of attacks on online freedom of speech, and share tools and tactics with activists and bloggers facing censorship on different parts of the globe. All you have to do is write a post in your own blog, including the following text…
China: Electric torture in web addiction clinics
A reporter, Guo Jianloong (郭建龍) from 21st Century Business Herald, did an investigative report on Internet Addiction Clinic in China. His report could not be published in full because of internal censorship and he decided to publish it in his blog. A censored report In his report, he exposed the...
Digital Activism & the 4Cs Social Media Framework
The 4Cs form a hierarchy of what is possible with social media. As we move from Content to Collaboration to Community to Collective Intelligence, it becomes increasingly difficult to both observe these layers and activate them. Although I designed the 4Cs framework to explain how I see social media, I have also found it to be a useful tools to evaluate specific social media initiatives.
Azerbaijan: Bloggers, Global Voices Online author reportedly detained in Baku
Frontline Club blogger and Global Voices Online author Ali S. Novruzov has reportedly been detained in Baku as the Azerbaijani capital prepared for a planned youth demonstration. Tweets from a reliable source report that at least one other blogger was also detained along with the head of the National Democratic...
Yemeni authorities prevents 6 newspapers from distribution
Yemeni government ordered the confiscation of six national newspapers, whose copies were pulled from the news stands and markets across the country yesterday alleging their role in promoting secessionism and anti-unity rhetoric. The move, according to observers, is unprecedented in recent Yemeni history and marks a serious downturn in the country's level of press freedom, which had already suffered several blows in the recent past.
Malaysia: Schizophrenic Attitude Towards New Media
News reports state that only thirteen media companies have been invited to the Perak Assembly sitting to be held on May 7, 2009. The sitting of the Malaysian state assembly of Perak is highly anticipated because of the current political climate in the state, which began when the ruling coalition, the...
