Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents

[jason]

Something interesting for us all...

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.

http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542

Comments

[pryde7.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. I'm quite convinced that the humble blog has the potential be relevant and important as a medium for communicating information, especially in parts of the world where power is in a state of flux or simply out of the hands of the common man.

K

[complicittheory.livejournal.com]

Guy's only, eh? ;) A friend of mine (hoder.com) has been pushing blogs in iran, but I wonder about us exporting western radical individualism. Is it just another hegemonic form of oppression?

[(Anonymous)]

Guys and girls, of course. Simply a figure of speech.

I was actually thinking about that the other day. Universalism and individualism had its opposition in their heydey in the late 18th-or-so Century, but speaking against such things (outside of the academic discourse community) now seems to be borderline heresy. As important as the individual is, it almost seems forgettable in this day and age that, by nature, we are social creatures by nature and not all cultures are compatible with the Western brand of humanistic individualism.

Ah, but sigh, this is a tedious subject of a complex and touchy nature. I've gotten into people's bad books with bringing this topic outside of the discourse community and into real life.

K

[(Anonymous)]

I keep forgetting to sign in, so excuse the anonymity.

K