Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008
The main page for the GV Citizen Media Summit 2008 can be found here.
Global Voices convenes a yearly Summit which 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.
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 event. Previous Summits have taken place in London, UK and New Delhi, India.
This year, Global Voices is partnering with Média Hungária, organizers of the annual MediaHungary and InternetHungary conferences, to hold the Summit in Budapest on June 27-28, 2008.
The Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008 will explore topics around the theme “Citizen Media and Citizenhood”, and address fundamental issues surrounding the actual and potential role of citizen media producers in the public life of the countries they live in. As the Internet and the increasing accessibility of citizen media tools offer growing numbers of people throughout the world the means to distribute information globally, how does this affect or change the ways in which people participate in public life? Can citizen media make people better citizens? How can citizen media help affect lasting social change?
The first day of the conference will be devoted to discussions of the challenges facing freedom of expression online. The second day will explore 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 address the issue of multilingualism on the Internet. Also part of the program is a hands-on workshop in building activism tools using free, web-based services such as Google maps, Twitter, SMS services and online video.
