12 March 2009
Stories from 12 March 2009
Arab World: Culture, Culture Everywhere
Across the Gulf various cultural festivals and literary events have been taking place in recent weeks, and in this post we hear from some of the region's bloggers who have attended them. However culture is not a politics-free zone; even a book fair or a cultural festival can be a source of tension...
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Brazil: On the Vatican's condemnation of raped-child's abortion
A 9-year-old girl several times raped and made pregnant by her stepfather was guaranteed the right to have an abortion legally in Brazil. After the operation, the Roman Catholic Church excommunicated the mother, the doctor and the whole medical team responsible for the operation. This has sparkled a great debate in Brazil: What is the Church's role in society?
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Ecuador: Quality Control of the Media
Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has had a rough relationship with the media and journalists in that country. A local newspaper claimed that the government was preparing a new law that would give the government more control over public and private media outlets. Even though the government denied this claim, Ecuadorian bloggers participated in an online discussion about the role of the media and the quality of their journalism.
Kenya: The Big Language Dilemma For Kenyan Poet Bloggers
Kenyan poets, unlike artists, find it easier to write and perform in English as opposed to any other language. This would be closely attributed to what language enables them express themselves better, and most definitely their command of that language. After a few interactions with a cross section of poets and by visiting their blogs, I realized that virtually none write in their mother tongue as much and very few have written in Kiswahili or Sheng.
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New Citizen Media Projects Foster Rising Voices in Ivory Coast, Liberia, China, Mongolia, and Yemen
Of the 270 project proposals we received from activists, bloggers, and NGO's all wanting to use citizen media tools to bring new communities - long ignored by both traditional and new media - to the conversational web, the following five are most representative of the innovation, purpose and goodwill that Rising Voices aims to support. Please join me in welcoming our new Rising Voices grantees.
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Japan: On Twitter, nobody knows you're a bot
“On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.” -- The words of a well-known adage dating back to a New Yorker cartoon from 1993 capture the anonymity people generally expect from online communication. This week a new take on this adage hit the Japanese blogosphere when a blogger discovered that two of his closest friends on Twitter were actually bots designed as part of a programming contest.
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Next time we will be there again :)