Malawi represented at Global Voices Summit in Hungary
Dr Sharra: The world in sore need of global understanding
As Malawi’s blogging community expands, two of its regular bloggers and Global Voices authors, Dr Steve Sharra and Victor Kaonga have been invited to attend the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008 in Budapest, Hungary. This the first time Malawi has been represented at the summit. Dr Sharra who blogs on the rebirth of Africa, said that he is excited to be amongst the 200 delegates as it gives him a rare forum to learn and exchange ideas on increasing citizen media participation.
"Citizen Media is proving to be a tool that enables education and knowledge about our societies, on a global scale. As such, Global Voices Online is helping promote global understanding,something the world is in sore need of today," said Sharra.
He added that to see Malawi represented at this summit is an encouragement to other Malawian bloggers and a promotion of the Malawian blogosphere.
According to Global Voices Online Managing Director, Georgia Popplewell, this is the third time that Global Voices has convened a Summit."This brings together the members of the Global Voices project and its wider community with a diverse group of bloggers, technologists, journalists and other interested persons, to share information on developments in citizen media spearheaded by and of direct relevance to people outside North America and Western Europe." said Popplewell in a media release.
She added that the summit also provides an opportunity for the members of the Global Voices project, who work in an entirely virtual office, to meet in person and map out the future direction of the organization in a closed two-day meeting following the public
This year’s Summit is exploring topics around the theme "Citizen Media and Citizenhood", and also addressing fundamental issues surrounding the actual and potential role of citizen media producers in the public life of the countries they live in.
Popplewell further said that as the Internet affect or change the ways in which people participate in public life, it is necessary that the summit ask questions: "Can citizen media make people better citizens? How can citizen media help affect lasting social change?"
Among others, the conference has discussions of the challenges facing freedom of expression online and also exploring applications of citizen media and Web 2.0 tools in a variety of situations, including election campaigns, community building and empowerment and disaster relief, and also addresses the issue of multilingualism on the Internet.
Global Voices aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore.It also has an advocacy project, which seeks to build a global anti-censorship network of bloggers, and online activists dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and free access to information online.
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