Sessions about China/Asia, India/South Asia and Africa here at the We Media conference. Good discussions that illustrate how variations in the way people relate to blogging and other user-controlled tools and genres can only be understood by considering the local and national contexts – such as different press and media traditions (previous post on this point). Some notes:
- China: EastSouthWestNorth. Blog written in Hong Kong that tracks and translates material from Chinese blogs and media. Rebecca MacKinnon: Web 2.0 is very Chinese, they are natural networkers. Andrew Lih: Studies Wikipedia globally. Wikipedia is blocked in China. One Chinese Wikipedia faction is open to accept censorship of “difficult” words. Several participants noted that there’s an implicit contract/compact between the Chinese authorities and the people: Politics, democracy is a no-go zone. In return you get extensive freedom in the economic and cultural sphere. But how can you really, in the long run, stop a civil society from emerging?
- India: Kamla Bhatt thought the mobile phone would be a more important platform than the PC in India (the same point was made about China). She described vividly the creative web 2.0 scene in Bangalore. Nitin Desai of the UN: Freedom of speech is seen as an absolute moral right in India. Neha Viswanathan follows Indian blogs for Global Voices.
- Middle East: Lisa Goldman directed the attention to contact between Arabic (Lebanese, Jordanian among others) and Israeli bloggers. She had been to Amman and met Jordanian bloggers there). The founder of cairolive Tarek Atia noted that people in the Middle East used to get their news from only one source, now their impulse is to check different sources.
- Africa: Matthew Buckland from Mail & Guardian: Although there is a big problem with connectivity in Africa, because of low costs of entry blogging is perfect for the developing world. Megan Knight: In Africa, citizen journalism connects with a long tradition for alternative media. Radio still most important medium.
Tags: we media
