Global Voices Online
Encyclopedia
Global Voices Online is an international network of bloggers and citizen journalists that follow, report, and summarizes what is going on in the blogosphere in every corner of the world. It is a non-profit website/project started by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School
, growing out of an international bloggers' meeting in December 2004, and is founded by Ethan Zuckerman
and Rebecca MacKinnon
. In 2008 it became an independent non-profit incorporated in Amsterdam, Netherlands
.
It has a team of regional editors that aggregates and selects what it thinks are the interesting conversations going on in a diversity of blogospheres, ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, with a particular focus on non-Western and underrepresented voices. One might find on its homepage, for example, Congolese bloggers discussing the 2006 elections, or Jordanian and Arab bloggers responding to the 2005 Danish cartoons controversy.
Its second objective is to develop tools and resources that make achieving the first objective more effective. A primary resource is maintaining a close working relationship with the mainstream media that is mutually beneficial: the best way to amplify underrepresented voices is to have their story picked up and covered by the mainstream media. Global Voices thus sees itself in a supplementary rather than an oppositional role to the traditional press. Reuters , for example, has given Global Voices an unrestricted grant in January 2006. Furthermore, as recognition for its contribution to innovation in journalism, Global Voices was granted the prestigious 2006 Knight-Batten Grand Prize.
. Project Lingua seeks to amplify Global Voices in languages other than English with the help of volunteer translators. There are currently 17 active translation sites and 12 BETA translations run as autonomous but linked communities.
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
, growing out of an international bloggers' meeting in December 2004, and is founded by Ethan Zuckerman
Ethan Zuckerman
Ethan Zuckerman is the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, officially starting in September 2011.Zuckerman was one of the first staff members of Tripod.com, one of the first successful "dot com" enterprises, and later founder of Geekcorps and Global Voices Online...
and Rebecca MacKinnon
Rebecca MacKinnon
Rebecca MacKinnon is a former CNN journalist who headed the CNN bureaus in Beijing and later in Tokyo, before leaving television to become a blogger and co-founder of Global Voices Online. She is on the Board of Directors of the Global Network Initiative and the Committee to Protect Journalists,...
. In 2008 it became an independent non-profit incorporated in Amsterdam, Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
.
Objectives and Means
Its objectives are twofold: first, to enable and empower a community of "bridgebloggers" who "can make a bridge between two languages, or two cultures."It has a team of regional editors that aggregates and selects what it thinks are the interesting conversations going on in a diversity of blogospheres, ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, with a particular focus on non-Western and underrepresented voices. One might find on its homepage, for example, Congolese bloggers discussing the 2006 elections, or Jordanian and Arab bloggers responding to the 2005 Danish cartoons controversy.
Its second objective is to develop tools and resources that make achieving the first objective more effective. A primary resource is maintaining a close working relationship with the mainstream media that is mutually beneficial: the best way to amplify underrepresented voices is to have their story picked up and covered by the mainstream media. Global Voices thus sees itself in a supplementary rather than an oppositional role to the traditional press. Reuters , for example, has given Global Voices an unrestricted grant in January 2006. Furthermore, as recognition for its contribution to innovation in journalism, Global Voices was granted the prestigious 2006 Knight-Batten Grand Prize.
Translations of Global Voices Into Other Languages
In 2007, a project with the aim of translating Global Voices content from English into other languages was formed, with the name Project LinguaProject Lingua
Project Lingua is an online translation community formed in 2007 with the goal of translating articles from the global citizen media project Global Voices Online from English into other languages, opening lines of communication between bloggers across the world...
. Project Lingua seeks to amplify Global Voices in languages other than English with the help of volunteer translators. There are currently 17 active translation sites and 12 BETA translations run as autonomous but linked communities.
External links
- Global Voices Online official site GVO Albanian translation project GVO Arabic translation project GVO Bangla translation project GVO Catalan translation project GVO Chinese (Simplified) translation project GVO Chinese (Traditional) translation project GVO French translation project GVO German translation project GVO Hindi translation project GVO Italian translation project GVO Macedonian translation project GVO Malagasy translation project GVO Persian translation project GVO Portuguese translation project GVO Spanish translation project GVO Japanese translation project
- Global Voices Advocacy
- Video of Ethan Zuckerman talking about Global Voices at TED