We're delighted to announce that we've succeeded — registration fees for the Summit have been slashed from €210 (approx US$323) to US$152 for both Summit days (June 27 and 28), including lunch and refreshments, for those registering before June 25. Complete pricing details are available at our registration page, where our online registration system should be up and running shortly.

The Global Voices (virtual) office has been abuzz with growing excitement as the Summit date draws near. As many of you know, our community is scattered across the globe and in spite of working very closely and successfully together on a daily basis, the Summit is the only point in the year where we meet face-to-face as a group.

Nearly 80 members of the Global Voices community will be coming to Budapest from various parts of the world for the Summit, including a number of grantees of our Rising Voices outreach program, plus several guests arriving specially for the Global Voices Advocacy portion of the program. Countries represented at the Summit so far include Burma, Kazakhstan, Sudan, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Trinidad and Tobago, USA, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Venezuela, China, India, Tajikstan, Bolivia, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Iran, Kenya, Singapore, Bahrain, Peru, Malawi, Tanzania, UK, Philippines, Colombia, Canada, Japan, Serbia, France, Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Taiwan and Armenia.

If you haven't yet visited the Summit web site and checked out our exciting program, we encourage you to do so. The moderators have been posting entries on the Summit blog previewing the panel topics and presenting the panelists, and we look forward to receiving your comments and input. For those of you who won't be joining us in Budapest, stay tuned for information about how you can participate remotely.

The Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008 is taking place thanks to the support of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Open Society Institute, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the European Journalism Centre and dotSUB.

Our Summit will take place this year in Budapest, Hungary on June 27-28, 2008. Visit the Summit site for background information on the goals of the meeting, our terrific program of events, registration details and information about the charming city of Budapest, including a list of blogs about Hungary.

And while you're at it, please help spread the word about the Global Voices Summit by flying one of our sweet-looking Summit badges or banners on your blog or web site.

Over the next few days and weeks we'll be adding speaker bios, a list of attendees and more — and do keep checking in at the site for blog posts and commentary from Summit participants and others and to join in the conversation.

See you in Budapest in June!

Our Lingua translation sites, which translate Global Voices' English-language content into over thirteen languages (and counting) are now more prominently linked from a box at the top right-hand side of the home page.

The main page for our Special Coverage sections, which attempt to aggregate the massive volume of citizen media commentary on topics like the 2007 Burmese Protests, Benazir Bhutto's assassination, Kenya's post-election crisis and, most recently, the protests in Tibet, is now linked from the navigation bar just below the Global Voices logo, and links to individual Special Coverage pages are highlighted just below the featured posts.

And last but not least, prominent links to our outreach section, Rising Voices, Global Voices Advocacy and our special US elections project Voices without Votes, are now displayed just before the short links on the right-hand side of the home page.

It's known as the universal solvent, Adam's Ale, government juice, council pop, H2O, dihydrogen monoxide, hydrogen hydroxide, has a ton of different names in Arabic and yesterday (March 22) the world was called upon to pay it special attention.

World Water Day 2008 marked the start of the fourth year of the UN International Decade for Action on Water that began in 2005, and to mark the occasion portals like ih20.org aggregated stories and videos while bloggers weighed in with insights and commentary from various corners of the world.

Madagascar blogger Malag@sy Miray posted a striking print advertisement (pictured above) from the Global WASH Campaign and noted that

A Madagascar, moins de 15% de la population disposent de l’eau courante dans leur logement et les ménages qui en ont se trouvent en majorité en zones urbaines [..] Or avec le taux de croissance démographique en vigueur actuellement à Madagascar, il serait faux de croire que ces buts seraient atteints par le seul équipement en réseau d’eau courante, sans une rapide prise en compte de la nécessité des mesures adéquats d’assainissements.

In Brazil, dozens of bloggers rallied around the appeal by the Faça a Sua Parte [Do Your Part, pt] blog, which sought to draw international attention to the critical lack of clean, safe drinking water worldwide, and remember that in Brazil, the world's richest country in terms of freshwater availability, forty million families have no access to drinkable water. Brazilian bloggers expressed the view that the country has an important role in preserving drinking water and are doing their bit to raise awareness about the importance of managing their precious water resources. Bloggers like Denise Rangel [pt] reminded readers that individual attitudes make a big difference to the planet:

Você já imaginou o quanto de água é desperdiçada no simples ato de ensaboar as mãos com a torneira aberta? De acordo com a Agência Nacional de Águas (ANA), são gastos cerca de sete litros! Não é mais admissível que ainda haja pessoas que se recusam a mudar pequenos hábitos que, além de trazer economia para seus próprios bolsos, proporcionam um grande bem ao meio ambiente e à vida de outras pessoas. O combate ao desperdício deve ser um hábito estimulado pela família inteira. Basta fechar a torneira ao ensaboar as mãos, ao escovar os dentes ou tomar um banho mais rápido.

Sérgio Coutinho [pt], on the other hand, expressed the view that it is necessary to stay ahead from the myth that if everyone makes a little effort the planet will be saved:

Seria interessante que o desperdício industrial de água, com centenas de litros jogados no lixo para a produção de uma só mercadoria (20 litros por frango, por exemplo) também sofresse com a regra “da parte de cada um”.

In the Middle East, Tel Aviv-based Yael K was woken up (by her cats) in the middle of the night, only to find that her thoughts turned almost immediately to water:

What? Doesn’t everyone else think about this issue in the wee hours of the morning?

For those of you who don’t know, our region is in the midst of a quite severe drought that has been going on for the past 4 years. We’ve had way less rainfall and snowfall than we generally get and far far less than we need in this arid desert region. For those who don’t know, right now the mid-west in the U.S. is getting far more rainfall and snowfall than they usually get and far far more than they need –in fact, they are being seriously flooded with lots of loss of life and damage to property and so forth occurring. The U.K. also got hit with severe flooding this year.

So my 4 a.m. thoughts ran something like this: Such a shame that those poor people are being flooded and us poor people are water-deprived. They’ve gotten more water in the last 2 weeks than we’ve gotten in a full year. All that lovely water is running amok in people’s houses and then will eventually drain out to the sea and become salty and even of less use than when it is destroying property and washing out roads. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were some way to move all that water from places it isn’t needed to places that it is? If our global warming trends and climate changes continue, at some point water will be worth more than oil and will go for a pretty penny. Then I fell back asleep.

Carl, in Jerusalem, recalled a post he wrote nearly a year ago considering the implications for Israel's water supply of any land-sharing arrangement with Palestine or Syria, and expressed concerns about the near future:

With warm temperatures hitting this weekend (temperatures are expected to hit 29 degrees Celsius today and 31 tomorrow), the winter rains are likely finished for the season. Unfortunately, we did not have enough rain this winter, and if the water levels run too low, the aquifers that supply our water may be irreversibly polluted. The existing desalination facilities are insufficient. We have a major problem that could potentially hit full force as soon as this summer.

The WITNESS Hub, meanwhile, presented the the other side of the argument, posting the first “chapter” of “Drying Up Palestine“, a 28-minute documentary by Rima Essa and Peter Snowdon which describes itself as “a film about what it's like to try and live with less than one raindrop out of every ten”.

The event will bring together the members of the Global Voices citizen media project and its wider community with a diverse group of bloggers, activists, technologists, journalists and others persons from around the world, for two days of public discussions and workshops around the theme “Citizen Media & Citizenhood”.

The Global Voices Summit provides an opportunity for us to share the knowledge in our dynamic global community with bloggers, activists, students and media professionals. The meeting will explore important developments in citizen media spearheaded by people outside North America and Western Europe and investigate how the growing number of people distributing information globally can help affect lasting social change.

The first day of the Summit, hosted by Global Voices' Advocacy section, will be devoted to discussions about censorship and the challenges facing free expression online. The second day will highlight cutting-edge applications of Web 2.0 on electoral campaigns in emerging democracies; tackle issues of translation and the idea of the world wide web as a multi-lingual space; and showcase citizen media solutions in emergency situations. The day two program will also include a hands-on workshop in building activism tools using free, web-based services such as Google maps, Twitter and online video-sharing sites.

An overview of the Summit program is posted at the end of this message. A Summit web site with registration information and a updated program will be available within the next couple of weeks, but feel free to contact me at georgiap@globalvoicesonline.org if you have further questions or for information about sponsorship.

Please add the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit to your calendars. We hope you'll join us in Budapest!

Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008
Budapest, Hungary - June 27-28, 2008

DRAFT PROGRAM

June 27, 2008

Session 1: “Toward a Global anti-censorship network”
Why do we need a global anti-censorship network? How can we facilitate the sharing of techniques, best practices and experiences around the protection of online free speech?

Session 2: “Citizen Media and Online Free Speech”
Citizen Media confronts the threat of censorship and oppression. Some case studies from Kenya, Burma, Egypt and Hong Kong.

Session 3: “Living with censorship”
Participants share their experience of living in countries where government censorship is a
reality and of being part of organized efforts to combat it.

Session 4: “Frontline Activists meet the Academy: Tools and Knowledge”
The tools to circumvent web filtering and other methods of online censorship exist, but they don’t always reach the people who need them as easily as they could. How can we facilitate better coordination between the developers of these tools and the anti-censorship movements that need them? And how do we facilitate the flow of information and from the activists back to the developers so the latter can design more appropriate tools?

Session 5: “NGO's and on-the ground activists: Defending the Voices”
How can NGOs most effectively work with on-the-ground free speech activists to combat censorship?

June 28, 2008

Session 1: “Web 2.0 Goes Worldwide”
The second incarnation of the internet means much more than social tagging, RSS, and trackbacks. Thanks to the steady proliferation of broadband connectivity throughout the developing world and the innovations of international web entrepreneurs, some of the most exciting online developments today are taking place in locations where, merely a decade ago, internet access was rare, if available at all. This panel will gather leaders of cutting-edge Web 2.0 initiatives from Bolivia, Botswana, Colombia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Session 2: “The Wired Electorate in Emerging Democracies”
The rise of blogging, social networking and micro-blogging services like Facebook and Twitter, video- and photo-sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr and the spread of mobile technology have given ordinary citizens the means, at least potentially, to participate more fully in the democratic process. This session looks at the impact these tools have had on recent elections in Kenya, Armenia and Iran and poses the question: is citizen media having an actual impact on democracies in transition?

Session 3: “Digital Activism Workshop”
Are you prepared for the next emergency in your blogosphere? In this session we break into group workshops for some hands-on training from activists who have used these tools to create mashups like the Access Denied map, which highlights censorship of Web 2.0 sites, Ushahidi.com, a presentation designed to visualize and document the post-election violence in Kenya, as well as report on crises using tools such as SMS and Twitter.
Group A) Google Maps mashups
Group B) SMS groups and flashmobbing
Group C) Campaigns for arrested bloggers
Group D) Video distribution
Group E) Reporting with micro-blogging tools

Session 4: “Translation and the Multilingual Web”
In the short history of global communication via distributed computer networks, numerous thinkers, specialists, media critics, social activists and writers have fashioned a vision of the Internet as a barrier-free forum for the inter-national and inter-cultural transmission of knowledge, ideas, and information. In practice, however, online communities are still divided by the differing languages they speak. Is online linguistic segregation a technical or cultural dilemma? Will machine translation tools such as Google Translate fulfill the promise of a multilingual web or is it up to human volunteer translators to construct bridges between language-oriented online spheres?

Session 5: “Citizen Media to the Rescue”
In moments of political upheaval, governments often silence the mainstream media either legally or with threats of violence. The only ones left to tell the story are citizens who witness it and share pictures and reports online. In this session we investigate the impact citizen media has had on emergency situations in Myanmar (Burma), Pakistan, and China, both internationally and locally.

As Delphine Nerbollier tells us in her interview (Fr) with Shahinaz on the NewsLab blog, Shahinaz broke with family tradition and left her native city in 2005, and now leads an independent life in Cairo. At 29 years old, she works as an telecommunications engineer with Orange, a job which, for her, raises a number of ethical questions. “Orange moved to this country to so they could pay engineers lower salaries, and I'm against that sort of thing,” she says. “But you still have to live, don't you?” Unlike the majority of Muslim women in Egypt, Shahinaz has never worn a headscarf or veil, and has no plans to do so in the future.

In this special edition of the Global Voices Show, Shahinaz talks about her own reasons for blogging; the risks faced by Egyptian bloggers who dare criticise the authorities; her friend, the imprisoned blogger Kareem Amer (whom she encouraged us all to write by giving us self-addressed stamped envelopes); and the activist blogging scene in Egypt.

China
A NetEase report on the news early Friday evening got more than three hundred comments (other NetEase reports had comments turned off), the first one of which read:

如果这个美国人当年赢了布什，世界会很不一样！
If this American had won at the time instead of Bush, the world would be a very different place!

谁评的，伊拉克和伊朗参与吧！！
Who were the judges? Iraq and Iran too, I hope!!

评委是怎么产生的?有没有公正和公平性,为什么诺贝尔奖总是没能中国人?
How is the judging committee set up? Is it just and fair? Why don't Chinese ever get Nobel prizes?

美国人在世界上到处杀人放火,它国家的副总统在拿诺贝尔奖?这个真真正正的国际大玩笑!
Americans are everywhere around the world killing and lighting fires, and a Vice President of this country has won a Nobel prize? This is real big international joke!

戈尔先生倡导环保，曾经被除数我看作当代美国人理性与良知的代表．但半年前曝出新闻，他夫妇俩每年私宅耗电达２２万度，是普通美国的１０倍，是普通中国人的三百倍．我开始以为是政客诽谤，但不久从他的发言人的辩解中获得证实．
Mr. Gore advocates environmental protection, and as I see it once represented the rationality and conscience of a modern but split America. But six months ago the news came out that he and his wife, the two of them each year in their home consume 220,000 kilowatts of power, ten times higher than the average American and three hundred times more than the average Chinese. At the beginning I thought this was some political smear, but soon after learned this was the truth from a spokesman of his.

你们看过纪录片《难以忽视的真相》。>没有,如果没有,你就不能妄下结论,如果当年戈尔胜了,那么世界现在将是另一个样子.他是一个绿色和平者,我很佩服他!是他把人类对地球的破坏用纪录片揭示给人们，使我们明白爱护地球，爱护我们的家园！他得奖无可厚非
Have any of you seen An Inconvenient Truth ? If you haven't, then you shouldn't be making any absurd conclusions. If Gore had won back in the day, then the world would be a completely different place. He's a ‘greenpeacer', I really admire him! It's him that made a documentary of human destruction of the environment for us to see, and showed us how to care for the earth, to care for our homes! There isn't much to criticism him for.

和平奖应该奖给我们杂交水稻专家袁荣平.如果没有袁荣平地球不知道多饥荒多乱,还和平奖?
The peace prize should have gone our hybrid rice expert Yuan Rongping. If it weren't for Yuan Rongping who knows how many people would be starving and how chaotic the world would be. So where's the peace prize?

Caribbean
The Cuban-American bloggers writing at Babalu Blog and El Café Cubano were far from elated at the news, but Caribbean Lionesse joined the chorus of those wondering whether the win would encourage Gore to take another shot at the US presidency:

It's funny now if you consider how Gore's image has been revamped. There was a time when he was thought to be dull and wooden and uninteresting. People underestimated and undervalued him and he did not win as he deserved. Now his public image is far, far better than that of Dubya.

India
Two reactions out of India focused on Rajendra Pachauri, the Indian scientist who heads the IPCC.

Sepia Mutiny offers some background on Pachauri's appointment to the position:

In recent years, Pachauri has sharply criticized the general lack of action on climate change, though interestingly his name was originally put forward for this post by the Bush administration, because he was thought to be less passionate about the subject than his British predecessor . . . The backstory on Pachauri’s initial appointment goes back to the controversy over the Bush administration’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol; more on that here. I’m a little puzzled as to why the Bush Admin. thought Pachauri would be a quieter candidate, especially since I gather he himself supported a boycott of ExxonMobil back in 2001.

At SAJAForum, Sree Sreenivasan notes the omission of Pachauri's name from the official Nobel citation, observing that “unlike the last two Peace Prizes, which also went to major organizations, in this case the head of the group is not named in the citation itself.” Sreenivasan goes on to speculate upon the reasons for the omission, concluding that

Yunus and ElBaradei [co-winners of the 2006 and 2005 awards, respectively] have been running their organizations for much longer periods of time (Pachauri only became head of IPCC in 2002) and  were the most public faces of Grameen and IAEA respectively - in fact, the ONLY public faces. Their stature and sheer force of personality would certainly have been a factor in naming them individually. The other is that there wasn't another, unconnected entity splitting those awards. Once Al Gore was going to get half the award, it wouldn't make sense to name Pachauri in the IPCC citation - perhaps.

Kerala blogger McMenon begins his post with a play on the title of Al Gore's Oscar-winning film, saying “They didn't give the award to Mahatma Gandhi, they never did. For the one man who lived and died for the sake of peace, it was inconvenient to the Nobel committee to honour a man who deserved it the most.” Saying that Gore failed to fight the good “fight for the Americans and the peace loving people of the world” when he conceded victory to George W. Bush in the 2000 US presidential elections, McMenon expresses deep skepticism of the whole affair:

Let us not be fooled by the Inconvenient Truth or the Nobel Peace Prize. The USA has not signed the Kyoto agreement. You don't expect a seasoned politician like Al Gore to be taking documentaries (leave that job to real movie makers like Michael Moore and Spielberg); one expects Gore to be putting political pressure on the American government. But, then, how would a man who has no self respect do anything to save the world.

Middle East
Dawoud at Mideast Youth congratulates the winners and cites some of the evidence that the world's climate may be changing, adding that

You’ve heard it all and I’m not gonna try to regurgitate all of it for the sake of doing so. According to the IPCC, we can do things today that can spare us from the worst of the predictions that are being made regarding the world 10 years from now. Just ask yourself what you can do and read more up on it and arm yourself. Human rights causes are one thing, but when mother nature does her thing, all of this means nothing.

Latin America
A couple of Latin American bloggers provided initial reactions to the news. Eduardo Villanueva, a Peruvian Communications Professor and blogger at Casi Un Blog Mk. II [ES] sees hope for so-called “nerds”:

Este Nobel de la Paz prueba que los nerds salvarán al mundo. Porque Gore
no será un nerd como los científicos del IPCC, pero igual… como no
puede ser nerd, se dedica a marketear a los nerds.

In Argentina, Louis Cyphre writes at the group blog El Opinador Compulsivo [ES] that he hopes that this announcement leads to something bigger:

Se lo digo en serio, espero que algo bueno salga de todo
esto y se presente como candidato a presidente en 2008.

Sub-Saharan Africa
On October 10, Ray Hartley, editor of South African daily The Times predicted that Al Gore was “heading for a unique double: An Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize”. In his October 12 entry, Hartley wrote that the Nobel prize “changes everything”:

There are nay-sayers who believe that Gore is a cynical lobbyist who is using the climate change issue to invent a fresh political career. I disagree with them. I covered the 2000 US Presidential election for the Sunday Times of South Africa and it was very apparent then that Gore was prepared to go out on a limb on environmental issues with no serious political benefit at the polls. What he has done is to popularise a very important issue. How the politics of climate change plays out is a different matter. From sunnier and sunnier South Africa, well done

Also pleased at the news was South African nicharalambous.com, who rejoiced that

Al Gore has finally won something. And to be honest, if I were him I would rather win the Nobel Peace Prize than the presidency of the US of A.

Another blogger with tongue in cheek was James Opiko at PoliticalArticles.NET, who suggested that

a “Libel” award should be bestowed jointly to Bush, Osama and Hitler (Posthumously) — for unleashing the worst terror on humankind in the last 100 Years.That would still not fully resuscitate America morally, but would restore much of the prestige that the number one nation in the world has lost in the last six years, under the clamps of a Republican THUG administration.

In this podcast I talk with Atillah about the movement's use of the Internet in their organising activities.

Some useful links:

No Smelters in T&T web site
Rights Action Group blog
Smelta Karavan web site
Saving Iceland - web site of anti-smelter allies in Iceland

Portrait of Atillah by caribbeanfreephoto
Other images courtesy Atillah Springer

Blogs
Jamaica House, Jamaican Lifestyle, Jamaica and the World, Moving Back to Jamaica, City Girl and Stunner's Afflictions, were some of the citizen voices commenting on the Jamaican election campaign, but even more notable, considering the Caribbean media's ambivalence about the read/write web, was the Jamaica Elections 2007 portal set up by the Jamaica Gleaner, the country's oldest newspaper. The portal, which carried the coveted domain name jamaicaelections.com, incorporates a forum, a photo gallery, a polling service and a blog. Much of the blog's content, however, seems to be re-purposed articles or lists of links from the Gleaner, and the photo gallery would probably have been more comprehensive if the site allowed users to contribute their own images from the campaign trail.

With Trinidad and Tobago's election date still to be annouced, it's left to be seen whether any of the country's three dailies will undertake anything similar to the Gleaner's elections portal. But politically oriented Trinidadian blogs like The Manicou Report, Jumbie's Watch, Keith in Trinidad and Trinidad Media Arts & Culture can be expected to enliven the election season discussions, as should a newly launched satirical blog purporting to present the inner thoughts of Patrick Manning, the current Prime Minister. Activist bloggers like Shivonne du Barry, Attillah Springer and the Rights Action Group, whose efforts were galvanised by the government's siting of an aluminium smelter in a rural area in southwestern Trinidad, are unlikely to be silent either.

Video
The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) beat the incumbent People's National Party (PNP) to the YouTube table, having posted the first of their campaign ads there back in July, and outdid the ruling party numerically as well, posting 31 videos to the PNP's 9. Also appearing on the JLP's YouTube channel are the series of televised debates between JLP leader Bruce Golding and PNP leader Portia Simpson-Miller. While most voters in Jamaica would have first been exposed to these advertisements on local television, releasing the ads and debates on YouTube makes them available to the country's large disapora community in the US and elsewhere, as well as to other interested users. Among the other election-related videos posted on YouTube or is one of a debate organised by Jamaicans living in Miramar, Florida.

Of the three leading political parties in Trinidad and Tobago, only the United National Congress (UNC) currently has a YouTube channel. YouTube user Casadoma Netvision, however, has posted five videos of meetings of the Congress of the People (CoP), the newest of the three contenders. A search for material related to the ruling People's National Movement (PNM) yielded nothing at the time of writing.

Facebook
Neither of the Jamaican parties appears to have a presence on Facebook, but in Trinidad and Tobago the social networking site (currently the second most popular in the country, according to Alexa) has captured the imaginations of political parties and voters alike.

Of the three Trinidad and Tobago parties, the CoP proves to be the savviest user of Facebook. While the party risks creating confusion with its presence as both a Facebook user and a group (open membership; 682 members), the party's Youth wing has what appears to be a serious and fairly active group with 341 members. Another group called “I'm Voting COP!!!” has 142 members. Political leader Winston Dookeran has a user account which lists links to his hi5 page, two e-mail addresses and a telephone number. Moreover, Dookeran's account appears to be genuine, unlike the three claiming to belong to the current Prime Minister Patrick Manning of the PNM (the Trinidadian taste for jokes is alive and well on Facebook). Manning is also pilloried in numerous Facebook groups, including “I hate Patrick Manning” and “Manning is d worse thing that ever happen to T&T“. The PNM's only openly accessible presence on Facebook appears to be a user called “Pnm People“.

The UNC's presence on Facebook at the time of writing consists of a group (membership by request) with 120 members and three events.

On the voters' side of things, a well-trafficked Facebook group called “T&T Elections …are you registered and where can this be done?” started by a teenager offers information and discussion about voter registration.

Political party web sites - who's the most “social”?
Of the two Jamaican party web sites, the Jamaica Labour Party has the more promising appearance, though further examination reveals relatively standard features. A “Get Involved” link leads to a page offering users two options for donating money (PayPal and Senvia Remittance Services). The party's YouTube videos are linked to but not embedded (rather surprisingly, the site instructs users to download a Flash player to view the videos). On the plus side (arguably), the JLP web site offers party ringtones for download.

The less promising looking People's National Party web site has a similar features to its rival's, but its video section has a built-in media player. The blog advertised on the main page disappoints with its two one-sentence entries, both clearly written by a party diehard. With only hours to go before the election, the party's “Donate” link is still promising electronic donations as a “Coming Soon” feature, listing instead three bank accounts where donors could physically deposit funds, after which they were instructed to “Please call/email the People's National Party to confirm receipt.”

Both Jamaican sites link to the Electoral Office of Jamaica's search engine, allowing users to confirm whether their names are on the electoral list.

Although it has yet to change its design to reflect its new title of “UNC Alliance”, Trinidad and Tobago's United National Congress wins the award for the most “social” of the leading Trinidadian party web sites, as well as the most comprehensive. The UNC's web site has a prominently positioned calendar of events and speeches from party events in both print transcript and downloadable MP3 form. Users can register for accounts which give them access to polls, a discussion forum, a live chat facility and e-mail notifications of site updates, as well as the ability to submit links. The “Links” section includes links to the UNC's Facebook page, a mailing list for New York-based party members and a Yahoo User Group, plus a link to the country's Freedom of Information Act. The site accepts donations via PayPal.

The Congress of the People web site is the most attractive and most modern in appearance of the three party web sites (the party is also the most recently formed). Via the site users can join the party, sign up as volunteers or to receive news updates, and make donations via PayPal. A calendar of events is accessible only after clicking a link on the main page, and a “media” section suggests that audio and video will eventually be posted on the site, but at the time of writing contains only print material. Also missing are links to the CoP's presence else on the web, including its vibrant use of Facebook.

Visitors to the PNM web site are greeted by a Flash animation of the party seal, which immediately pushes the site into third place in terms of the modernity of its design. It's the least attractive and user-friendly of the three party sites, with no interactive features except an online poll. A multimedia page offers material dating back to 2005 and 2006 and only available in streaming Real Player of Windows Media Player format. The site's greatest asset may in fact be an interesting set of old photos of Dr. Eric Williams, the party's founder and the country's first Prime Minister.

Does the Internet matter in Caribbean elections?
With official (2006) Internet penetration figures of only 12% for Trinidad and Tobago and 39.6% in Jamaica, it's reasonable to ask whether the Internet can have a real impact on the outcome of an election in these countries. One area where it seems fairly clear the Internet can have play a role in Caribbean elections is on involving overseas diaspora communities in the political process. The donation buttons on party web sites are a sign of their keen awareness of this, notably the Jamaica Labour Party's telling link to a money transfer service specialising in remittances from overseas, which in Jamaica are said to top the list of foreign exchange inflows into the country.

Analysing the politically-oriented online activity in her country in this election year, however, Trinidadian blogger Shivonne du Barry, while celebrating the “alternative spins” on current events being provided by blogs and social networking sites, expresses some skepticism:

All of this is enough to make me think that the population is really politically savvy and educated despite the lack of structured civics education in our school system. What I worry about is whether the online community, with ready access to computers and the Internet, are an accurate representation of the general population. What about the political opinions of those on the other side of the digital divide? And it may be that the Internet is just the latest forum for Trinis to do what they do best, talk. How much this translates into action is another question. Like a friend of mine, wary of all the online talk that has been taking place, recently wrote: “While we, ‘the future', sit and occupy our time amusing ourselves with all these…discussions, the true leaders in the real world are doing as they please.”

Caribbean Free Radio writes in reply:

Juxtapose the 12% internet penetration rate and Danah Boyd's infamous findings about Facebook and class (assuming they apply to Trinidad and Tobago) and you conclude that Shivonne's concerns are well taken, as of course they are - they're the concerns perennially expressed in discussions about the role/value of the the internet in “developing” societies. But they also assume that, in the absence of Facebook and its equivalents, the political dialogue/activity taking place among this select group would have taken a different (and possibly superior) form (as well it might). Or taken place at all.

They also assume (more than likely correctly) that there's not some parallel activity taking place “on the other side of the digital divide” via cell phones and SMS. They also assume that all online political activity will necessarily be partisan. Might we not see some serious citizen reporting this upcoming election season? Might some ordinary person not happen to capture some priceless image or bit of footage on a cell phone camera that the jaded media practitioners have missed?

“This is the Demerara Cricket Club ground behind that wall - an enclosed wading pool with the slightest rain fall..it must now be a veritable lake,” writes Flickr user Chennette, a Trinidadian living in Guyana, in the caption to the image above:

I woke up this morning to find water up to my gate. It's all over town, many people on ground floors have water. It's not that high in some areas, like Queenstown for example, but I am not driving out there when I can't tell where the canals end and the road begins. Not to mention unknowingly stumbling upon feet rather than inches of water…It's not yet the floods of December 2004-January 2005, but I am thinking of that…      

This evening Chennette reports via FlickrMail that “the water hasn't really taken over the city completely, and it has receded in many areas, but that area of Queenstown hasn't changed at all. At all. What I am not looking forward to is the night time rains.”

Finally, episode 5 of the Global Voices Show! In this edition we feature excerpts from the following podcasts:

Gastronautics - Maldives
PodMasti - India
J.U.M.P. Radio - Kenya
Mideast Youth - Saudi Arabia
Budacast - Hungary
Africa Files: The Pulse - Zimbabwe
The Kimchi Girls - Korea

Also featured on this show are the following music tracks: “Black Heart” by Kou Chou Ching and “In Development” by Gordon's Suitcase, both remixed by Moshang and appearing on the collection “Asian Variations“.

This episode of The Global Voices Show is available in the following formats:
- MP3 (16:50 min; 15.5 MB)
- Enhanced AAC (16:50 min; 16.6 MB) - with embedded images and links. For iTunes and owners of later model iPods.

Or subscribe to this podcast using any of the following links:

MP3 (all Global Voices podcasts) - RSS | iTunes (podcast page) | iTunes (direct subscription link) | Odeo
AAC (Global Voices Show) - RSS | iTunes (podcast page) | iTunes (direct subscription link)

THE JOB: The Video Editor will be responsible for keeping track of online citizen-produced video from throughout the world and selecting clips to be featured and contextualized in articles on the Global Voices web site 2-3 times per week. The Video Editor will work closely with the rest of the Global Voices editorial staff (managing, regional and language editors), and will also be expected to attend regular online editorial meetings.

As GV is a virtual organization, the Video Editor will not be expected to relocate. Regular access to high-speed internet connectivity will, however, be a key factor in being able to carry out this job.

THE REQUIREMENTS: Our ideal candidate has an international outlook and solid experience in blogging and online citizens' media with a special emphasis on online video. Solid English-language writing editing skills are a must, but a strong familiarity with the current tools, web sites and trends in online video worldwide is important. S/he has the ability to work independently and responsibly with only remote supervision.

Ideally, s/he will have the ability to read and write well in at least one language other than English and have a working knowledge of other languages. Preference will be given to candidates from outside the United States and Western Europe.

To apply, please send your CV and a letter of interest to editor@globalvoicesonline.org. The application deadline is Friday August 24, 2007.

This award has special meaning for us not only because Reuters is one of the principal sponsors of our project, but also because Global Voices content is featured quite prominently on Reuters Africa's country pages (see the “BLOGS” section at the top right-hand side of any page). We were very excited when Reuters approached us earlier this year with the idea of incorporating our RSS feeds into their new project. As Rachel Rawlins wrote in an article announcing the Africa site launch back in February 2007,  “it. . . . demonstrates the increasing value placed by news organisations on the ability of authentic voices to provide perspective, background and context to the events they cover.”

Congratulations, Reuters — we're absolutely thrilled that you've won this award, and extremely proud to be a part of the Africa Reuters project.