GlobalVoices in Learn more »

Seeking “Bridge Bloggers”

Global Voices Online is looking for “bridge-bloggers.”

What is a bridge-blogger? Somebody who acts as a “bridge” between their blogging community and the rest of the world. Lots of blogospheres are springing up around the world, in lots of languages, but many of them don't communicate with each other. That's unfortunate, as there is much potential for dialogue across these communities.

We hope you will help us change that. For examples of bridge-blogging, here's a post I did summarizing Chinese blogger reaction to the registration deadline and internet censorship. Here's one on Mexican blogs by David Sasaki, bridging between Spanish and English. And here is some bridge-blogging by Ory Okolloh and Ndesanjo Macha about the Kenyan and Kiswahili blogospheres. Ethan Zuckerman has done some great bridge blogging about African bloggers' views of the G8, which has helped bring media attention to actual African perspectives.

If you're interested in doing this kind of bridge-blogging between your country's or region's blogosphere and the rest of the world, please let us know. The best way to start is by doing some bridge-blogging on your own blog. For example: write a post in English (with links to the original posts) about what the Arabic blogosphere is buzzing about this week, or tell us what the Russian bloggers are concerned about, what the Chinese blogs are discussing lately, or what the Francophone blogosphere is currently reacting to. Once you've done this, please email us with the link at: globalvoices DOT dailylinks AT gmail DOT com, and we'll be sure to point to it.

If you're already doing this and we don't know about it, by all means please let us know. We are also trying to build an index of bridge blogs on this wiki. So if you know of blogs not listed there please add them.

Then, after doing this a few times, if you like the response to your work and feel that this is something you have the time and energy to do regularly on the Global Voices site, please let us know at globalvoices DOT online AT gmail DOT com.

12 comments

  • [...] and Ethan wanted to bring some of these bridge-builders (later dubbed “bridge bloggers“) together to discuss, debate, and shape a shared vision for an inclusive, unmediated, [...]


  • [...] It would also be possible to visualize the web in terms of language. I imagine that this would reveal a geography of continent-clusters separated not by oceans but by language, so that Spain and Mexico would be neighbors, somewhat apart from the United States. As far as I know, no one has done this yet. It might tell us something about how information flows between cultures, or reveal useful bridge-bloggers. [...]


Join the conversation

Authors, please log in »

Guidelines

  • All comments are reviewed by a moderator. Do not submit your comment more than once or it may be identified as spam.
  • Please treat others with respect. Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.

 

World regions

Countries

Languages