Global Voices · Citizen media stories from 2007 May 27

27 May 2007

Daily archive · 5 posts

Stories from 27 May 2007

Russia: Vacationing Survey

Written by Veronica Khokhlova · Eastern & Central Europe

Russian-language LJ community eco_altai is a place for fans of ecotourism in Russia's Altai Republic to meet and share impressions and beautiful pictures. Right now, an interesting survey is being conducted there: on vacationing in the Russian Federation. Read on to learn some of the results.

· read »

Morocco: YouTube is Blocked, and the Blogoma is Not Happy

Written by Jillian C. York · Middle East & North Africa

It seems that censorship is on the rise again in Morocco. After last year's blocking of Livejournal and Google Earth, the blogoma erupts as YouTube is added to the censure list. Jillian York reports on what the blogoma thinks of this recent act of censorship.

· 21

· read »

Syria: Presidential Referendum and Lebanon Clashes

Written by Yazan Badran · Middle East & North Africa

Today, Syria is reelecting president Bashar Assad for a new seven-year term in office. The process is done through a referendum, which means there will be no other challengers. The referendum paper has a green circle that says "Yes" and a gray one that says "No". The result is expected to be 99.xx% in favour of the president - as is the tradition in Syria for the last 37 years. Yazan Badran sums up the reactions of Syrian bloggers here.

· 1

· read »

Venezuela: Bloggers Mobilize For and Against the End of Transmission of Radio Caracas Television.

Written by Luis Carlos Diaz · Latin America

Radio Caracas Television's (RCTV) broadcast license was not renewed by the Venezuelan government, which opened up two fronts within the Venezuelan blogosphere. Blogs were created with the sole purpose to discuss this topic, and there was very little room for gray area. Bloggers normally took one of two sides, either "I am with RCTV" (for) or "RCTV from the Inside" (against), which produced thousands of blog entries on the subject.

· 6

· read »

Korea: Bloggers are not reporters

Written by Hyejin Kim · East Asia

On the 19th of this month, one of the major internet portal sites announced the new period of blog journalism in Korea. Their section, media daum blogger news which opened...

· read »

Updates from 27 May 2007

Kenya

Mzalendo is looking for its users in Nairobi: “Are you a regular Mzalendo user based in Nairobi? If you are interested in being interviewed on your views about Mzalendo by Reuters, please get in touch with us via the contact page.”

• Ndesanjo Macha

Iran

Digital Kalashinkov,blogger and journalist, says[Fa] Iranian society becomes more fragmented everyday.The blogger writes there is a growing gap between elites and masses.He adds religion and nationalism can not anymore bring together the majority of people. He says country becomes divided based on ethnicity.

• Fred Petrossian

Benin

Babilown points to an article in Le Matin (Fr) about rumors that Benin's government plans to create a Ministry of Religion, and outlines the potential of such a ministry to erode the constitutional separation of church and state (Fr). In a comment, T. Nouatin agrees that although a Ministry of Religion can hijacked by religious interests seeking to exert control over the state, it can also be a means of easing tensions between religious communities and preventing sectarian violence.

• Jennifer Brea

Iran

Ultra conservative Ayatollah Messbah Yazdi is invited to the Waterloo university by the Mennonites.A petition has been launched to protest about this invitation.”We're not against dialogue but the Mennonites[Waterloo University] are naive if they think they can open one with these people,” says Haideh Moghissi, a York University sociologist who with 17 others signed a protest letter sent to the university.

• Fred Petrossian

Republic of Congo

Congopage offers a brief review of a new book by Gilbert Dzassabi, a lieutenant-colonel of the Congolese Air Force (Congo-Brazzaville) who studied in Russia and later in France, where he earned a Ph.D in political science. Dzassabi tries to explain why his country's troubled neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa), has found itself in a state of perpetual war (Fr) since securing independence from Belgium in 1960.

• Jennifer Brea

D.R. of Congo

Bien au Bout… writes about his neighbor, Karim, who asked to be shown photographs of Brad Pitt and George Clooney (Fr). Apparently, Karim was listening to the BBC and heard about an event in Cannes organized by Ocean's 13 stars Pitt, Clooney, Matt Damon and Don Cheadle that raised $9.2 million for Darfur, and was wondering who was eligible to get that money.

• Jennifer Brea

South Korea

A blogger discovered what terms for parents are popular in Korea through the search engines of several major portal sites. According to the table and graph that he (she) made, father (a-beo-ji) is used more than dad (a-bba) and, on the other hand, mom (eom-ma) is used more than mother (eo-meo-ni) by internet users. The blogger’s theory is that it shows relations between parents and their children in Korea [ko].

• Hyejin Kim

South Korea

Love for students and rapper trainee teacher. Finishing his practice teaching at a middle school, a trainee teacher expressed his love for students with a rap song which he composed and made it into a video clip on the internet. It was hit more than 65,000 times so far. Students sent their love back to him with drawings and pictures that they made. [ko]

• Hyejin Kim

South Korea

The best strategy to lose weight. A year ago, a blogger bought a bicycle and commuted to work on it. He shows a graph of his weight for a year, which makes it clear that bicycling caused his weight to drop (and then to rise again when he stopped temporarily). He promised to provide a second season of his experience losing weight through bicycling [ko].

• Hyejin Kim