When we last summer started to see the microblogging-hype we felt that a search dedicated to microblogs would be a quite natural development for us. We like Twitter Search and been using it a lot, especially at conferences and when news like Mumbai were having the best news source at Twitter. But because we used Jaiku ourselves it wasn’t what we needed in many cases.

Microblogging services covered by Twingly’s search engine are: Twitter, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Pownce (which is dead, but a six month archive remains searchable), Swedish Bloggy.se and the German Bleeper.de.
They will keep adding new services, and aim to cover all microblogging services out there.

How did it happen so quickly? This is the fun part. Lee is a very conservative guy, who still believes in “control”. What he did was, when numerous protests broke out around the country, he basically ordered the media companies “not to report” to the people about what’s happening. There were police at work, trying to stop the “peace candlelight” protests, or vigils now called; some police went quite violent, but none to be reported by major broadcasters, newspapers, Internet news sites, or magazines.

But we’re living in the age of Web 2.0. Now people are in control. People that were there became citizen journalists – thousands and thousands. And the force of citizen journalism has grown so immense that basically nobody can stop it now.

One site gathered a stunning 1.5 million signatures to an online call for impeachment. Read the full piece here.

News Manager Olivia M calls out:

So here’s where I turn to you guys for help! If you see examples of fellow YouTubers doing great work in journalism and reporting, please let me know. If you’re a citizen journalist yourself, tell me how YouTube could better serve you. I want to hear how you guys envision news on YouTube and what you’d like to see. My ultimate mission is to make the site a go-to destination for news on the web.

A good ambition, for sure. But after 18 text replies, Olivia hasn’t yet got back to the users commenting her post. And with comments as this one, dated May 26, I feel it’s urgent that she should, if she wants this effort to be taken seriously:

We are very concerned about YouTube’s implementation of geolocational censorship in Thailand and elsewhere. How do you intend to distribute real news to its intended audience without being compromised by YouTube’s secret agreement with Thai government? Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT)

Wishing Olivia and the YouTube the best of luck with the initiative, and hoping to see a bit more interaction with the users.

Excellent clip from WAN in Gothenburg, provided by Medievärlden. Pierre Haski of Rue89.com on how to take your readers seriously and get good quality comments and a good debate.

More at Medievärlden (in Swedish).

There are many areas where transparency is a good thing. In some ways, this isn’t one of them. At the same time, social media or indeed citizen journalism is one of the few ways to really find out what’s happening in troubled areas like Afghanistan or Iraq. Wherever wrongs are being committed by either side, I for one hope the soldiers are brave enough to go public with it through the media – citizen or traditional – so that we don’t get another Abu Ghraib scandal.

(via IDG.se)

In other parts of the world, however, those simple actions can get you into serious trouble. I recently read an article in AsiaMedia about the situation in Sri Lanka. The country is the world’s third most dangerous place for journalists to operate, with only Iraq and Somalia being more deadly. Seven journalists were killed there in 2007.

Pedestrians who use their cellphones to film bomb attacks or even everyday events get questioned by police, and it’s not only authorities that pose a threat to reporters or anyone with a camera. There’s a trend of citizens not turning to the tools of citizen media to improve their situation, but instead turning against anyone trying to do this, or anyone remotely suspected of it.

Anyone with a still or video camera in public is immediately suspected as a “trouble-maker.” This endangers our right to click and shoot for personal or professional purposes.

Despite this, however, there is a movement of citizen journalism, though it’s a lonely and vulnerable job, especially with a decrease in democracy in recent years. New media activist Sanjana Hattotuwa is interviewed, and says:

- In Sri Lanka, the significant deterioration of democracy in 2006-2007 has resulted in a country where anxiety and fear overwhelm a sense of civic duty to bear witness to so much of what is wrong. No amount of mobile phones and PCs is going to magically erase this deep rooted fear of harm for speaking one’s mind out.

The article writer, Nalaka Gunawardene, brings up an example which clearly shows the poor state of democracy and the hardship for bloggers in Sri Lanka.

A fellow blogger recently wrote a moving piece about a 65-year-old woman who sells fruits and vegetables at her local market in Colombo. The story behind the story was how the blogger had been surrounded and questioned by four men and the police, who demanded to know whether she had “permission from the municipality to photograph.”

Luckily, the vegetable sellers came to her rescue. “They… said they asked me to come with the camera to take some photographs of them,” she wrote.

But she posed the question: “Do we have to have a camera license like a gun license of yesteryear?”

(via Social Media)

Per Mosseby of Pixbox says at Hubbub 07 he thinks the developing countries is where the mobile revolution will truly happen.
When mobile applications have been developed, the laptop is better than the cellphone in all aspects of the services that were going mobile. That is however changing, Per Mosseby says.
- Things are really starting to happen. The iPhone is a small revolution in this field. This means that everyone has to think about mobility.
- In my eyes it all comes back to what I think is going to be the big revolution in the mobile space.
When the bottom of the pyramid population can afford cellphones – all these 4 billion people who don’t have a digital identity – there’s going to be a lot of turnover.
- They do not have an alternative device to go back to.

not only don’t you need permission, but you don’t need much money, either

In finding new ways for citizen media to develop, Gillmor has a philosophy. This is his advice:

* Openness: Use open technologies, and be open with others about what you are doing. Now, a truly spectacular idea may be such a hot business project that one should work in stealth mode, but most ideas will find more traction with the help of others who care about what you’re doing.
* Use tools that already exist: Reinventing wheels is rarely a productive use of time in the cheap-experiments arena. Chances are that many if not all of the tools you need are already available.
* Collaboration: Work with anyone and everyone.
* Take risks: This is by far the most important. Silicon Valley, where I’ve lived for more than a decade, has taught me a crucial truth, that a culture of risk-taking is a precondition for wider success. The low cost of trying, and correspondingly low cost of failure, is removing virtually all reasons for not taking chances.

The last point is about trust, and is well worth reading in its entirety.

Behind the move is Berlingske’s new editor-in-chief, Lisbeth Knudsen. According to New Media Trends, she says the new strategy has “earthquake” like dimensions.

As Jon Lund at New Media Trends points out, there are a number of challenges to face for Berlingske.
Having traditional journalists refocus on web publishing takes time and energy. One important aspect is that the print journalists will find out what it’s like to get instant feedback within seconds of writing an article, and they’ll learn to start to think of publishing as communication. The result will hopefully result in better products, both online and in print.

Sriram Krishnan talked about media landscapes in Singapore. It was meant to be a joint presentation with his friend Justin Lee in Singapore, but that didn’t quite work out. Probably because the internet connetion here really sucks.
Anyway, Singapore is interesting because of it’s small size yet prominent position online. Sriram showed that out of the top ten search terms on Technorati, two were individuals from Singapore.
The reason? Part of the explanation is that Singaporeans are early adopters, they have good infrastucture, pick up trends from Japan and Europe.
The younger generation want to express themselves more. There are more blogs than youths in Singapore, Sriram Krishnan said.
The government, “Gahmen”, is revamping schools with tablet pcs, podcasts and other high-tech stuff. But they also set limits to what you can say and do both irl and online.
- The sedition act says you can’t speak your mind. If you do and it’s considered to be dissatisfactory to the governement, you’ll be put in jail.
Krishnan showed a site called Stomp, which is the gahmen’s answer to web2.0 for young people.
- In my opinion it’s failed miserably. It’s a bad site.
There’s also content regulation online. The govenment wants to preserve traditional Asian values. Political bloggers needed to register prior to the elections in 2006, and podcasts were banned altogether.

To check out all my photos from Podcamp, check out to my Podcamp Flickr set.

Two years ago, Japanese authorities arrested a man for carrying out a series of virtual muggings in another popular game, Lineage II, by using software to beat up and rob characters in the game and then sell the virtual loot for real money.

The key question is whether for instance rape, child abuse, mugging and killing online should be compared to these acts in the real world. And if so, which country’s laws should the crimes fall under.

Philip Rosedale, the founder and chief executive of Linden Labs, said in an interview that Second Life activities should be governed by real-life laws for the time being. He recounted, for example, that his company has called in the FBI several times, most recently this spring to ensure that Second Life’s virtual casinos complied with U.S. law. Federal investigators created their own avatars and toured the site, he said.

In coming months, his company plans to disperse tens of thousands of computer servers from California and Texas to countries around the world in order to improve the site’s performance. Also, he said, this will make activities on those servers subject to laws of the host countries.

A college student in Brazil has been condemned to pay 3 500 reails (about 1 700 US dollars) for abusing a fellow student at the online community Orkut.

Globo.com reports about a student that had created a community at Orkut, where he wrote about his fellow student as being an extraterrestrial.
The victim of the abuse, who became a target for mocking and laughs, at the college in the Metropolitan Area of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, decided to start a process against the student and was successful. But the student is still able to reply to the supreme court in Brasília, Brazil.

As my Brazilian friend Luis Fernando Sandes was online, I asked him what he thinks about this story and that Brazilian internet users are treating each other bad on the web?
– I can not think of something that happens in virtual life that does not happens in real life. That goes for both good and bad things, he says.
He thinks that we should expect to see things like this happening on the internet. People are always going to mock eachother and it is impossible to control what people are doing on the web. He himself has not been the target of any abuse.

Luis thinks that people won’t stop creating communities like this. But that the people who are managing Orkut and other communities should work on engines to detect and erase them easily.
– If necessary send the content to the police and punish the guilty, as it would be treated in real life, he says.

Luis joined Orkut because he thought that it would be a nice place where he could get in contact with people from different places, such as Recife or Stockholm.
– It is a just another way to keep in touch with friends and to meet new people. But it is not much harder to keep in touch with them without Orkut, he says.

On the question why Orkut has been such a great success in Brazil he answers:
– Many Brazilians are communicative and friendly, maybe that is the reason?

Luis has only been using Orkut so far, but he is looking for entering Second Life, because he has heard a lot about it.
– Maybe Second Life is going to be the next big thing in Brazil, as they are going to translate it to Portuguese?, he says.

Disclosure disclaimer: VG is Aftonbladet’s sister paper, with many collaborations between the sites.

A lot of Twitter mashups have popped up lately. The latest that I’ve tried out is Twittervision, a live world view where twits show in real time. It’s rather addictive watching people’s actions described all over the globe. I’m still pretty hooked on Twitter, and I like that they keep developing the service. Though the increase in numbers of users have caused them some server problems. At times today it’s been impossible to reach the site. Hopefully they’ll fix it soon.

Twittervision is in beta, and is a service from David Troy, who’s also behind Twittermap, which is also pretty cool. You can type in your location and see what others in your area are twittering about. I found myself in Stockholm, though since I haven’t given an exact address it’s not actually where I was at the time of twittering.

When Twitter adds gps data, this will be really interesting. Now the locations are often pinned wrong, twits from people travelling show up in their home town.

Troy is also behind Twittersearch, a search engine for Twitter.

There are also a large number of Twitter widgets to use on blogs or other sites. Twitter has added to their own widgets, or badges as they call them, letting users display the latest twits from their added contacts. Here’s an example on my personal blog.

Reporters without borders issued a statement voicing their concern about the law being a threat to free speech.

The sections of this law supposedly dealing with ‘happy slapping’ in fact have a much broader scope, and posting videos online showing violence against people could now be banned, even if it were the police who were carrying out the violence

Happy slapping is when a gang beats up someone, films the event and spreads the film – just for “fun”. This is what the law is meant to prevent, but as it is written, it will effect citizen journalists doing important work.
Reporters without borders goes on to talk about how important ordinary citizens are as “recorders” of the authorities’ activities around the world, naming Egypt as a recent example where bloggers have revealed scandals involving security services. Video recording played an essential part in revealing the widespread use of torture.

In the field of human rights, it is them and not professional journalists who have been responsible for the most reliable reports and information – the information that has most upset the government. Reporters Without Borders thinks it would be shocking if this kind of activity, which constitutes a safeguard against abuses of authority, were to be criminalized in a democratic country.

Odebi, a civil liberties group in France, has collected some of the response to the news.

In Sweden, anyone can actually be a journalist in the sense that there is no required education you have to have in order to call yourself a journalist. You need to work as a journalist to be a member of the journalists union and get a press card though.
I am not sure how this works in France, but I am assuming they have some kind of journalist card to define who’s a professional journalist. If not, it would be interesting to know how they distinguish between citizen and professional journalists. And what about journalists who blog on their free time? If I, for instance, would film a French police officer beating up an innocent person, and I would blog about it here, would that be against the French law? I don’t blog here as a journalist, but as a citizen.

(via Beta Alfa)

Folha Online is the most important online newspaper in Brazil and the editorial office is situated in São Paulo.
Folha went online seven years ago. Fifty people work in shifts; there is always someone there to update the news, in the open landscape office.
The website has about 700 000–1 million visitors per day. The number of Internet users in Brazil, and their online time, is increasing fast.

I check in as a visitor and the information board in the lobby tells me that it takes about four buildings to host the Folha Online, the Folha Newspaper and the Internet portal OUL, which Folha Online is a part of.

Ricardo Feltrin, 44 years old and the chief web editor, shows me the editorial office.
– People want to read about gossip and, in second place, about news, he says.
Ricardo has been working as a journalist for 16 years and he runs the web TV show “Ooops!”
It is all about national and international celebrities. The click rate is very good.
It is to be found on their Internet portal OUL. And Ricardo himself is a well-known character in São Paulo.

After being introduced to the staff and a quick walk through the website, it is time for lunch.
– What I would prefer to eat? You can find anything you want here in São Paulo, Ricardo says.
We grab a taxi and make the short trip from downtown SP to the part of the city that is called “Liberdade”. It is the Japanese district and a result of the labour immigration from the Asian country during the 19th century. It made São Paulo the “second city of Japan”.

We enjoy: dumplings, stuffed squid, extra ordinary sushi, and sashimi, while talking a bout life, travelling and Folha Online’s future.
Ricardo is worried. The owner of Folha (the Newspaper) and Folha Online is Octavio Friar de Oliviera. He is 94 years old and no one really knows what might happen when he is not around anymore.

We are having tempura (deep fried) ice cream for desert. This is one of the best Japanese restaurant is São Paulo. The artist behind the counter creates wonderful little masterpieces and you are allowed to bring you own fish and get it prepared.

In the taxi back to the Folha, I ask Ricardo Feltrin if they are using any user generated material, like blogs, on Folha Online?
He tells me that they only have their own bloggers, which are already connected to Folha Online.
Their first blog was the political blog and the author Josias de Souza did his first posting in October 2005. He was followed by Sonia Francine Gaspar Marmo. She writes about sport, a culture blog, a blog about gay people and a seven more blogs.

One of the Folha online bloggers is Marcelo Katsuki. He is 38 years old and works as a graphic designer at the online paper.
The name of his blog is “Comes & bebes” (food & drink). He tries to do at least one posting per day.
– I wanted to learn how to cook and did cookery course, he says and smiles.
Marcelo did hesitate when he was asked if he wanted to start a blog and write about food, drinks and cooking.
– There are people writing about gastronomy for the Folha newspaper and they are very good, but I decided to have a try, Marcelo says.
He did his first posting in August 2006.

His blog is divided in to a couple of different sections, which makes it possible to squeeze in about everything that falls with in the area of food.
He still has to buy the cookery books that he writes about.
– My friends tell me that I should not do that, but it is my hobby, Marcelo says.
His favourite cuisines are Thai, Brazilian-Bahian and Japanese.
– Normally I get about 5–10 comments on every posting. At first they were complaining about my writing, but now I am mostly getting positive comments, he says and gives me a kiss on the cheek, the way you do in Brazil, when we say good buy.

I guess I have to send a Swedish cookbook to Marcelo, when I get back to Stockholm. Even though Ricardo Feltrin tells me that he has heard that Sweden has got not quite so good food, but very nice women ; )

Birgitta Wilén, São Paulo, Brazil.

Read more about blogging and newspapers in Brazil at the International Symposium of Online Journalism

With Germany’s biggest online presence, Spiegel Online making money, German publishers have figured out that the Web is here to stay. But citizen journalism has been slow to catch on and some of the hesitancy may be cultural.
“Germany’s civil society is not very familiar with the idea of one feeling entitled to publicly articulate himself,” said Christoph Neuberger, from the university of Muenster, “and journalism in Germany is always reproached with seeing its audience more like objects of influence than as responsible individuals that just want to inform themselves.”

Interestingly enough the Reader’s Edition uses Wordpress. (I’ve been looking at different CMSs for a hobby project lately, hence my interest. Right now I’m leaning towards Drupal. But Wordpress is still an option.)

The power of principled leaking to embarrass governments, corporations and institutions is amply demonstrated through recent history. Public scrutiny of otherwise unaccountable and secretive institutions pressures them to act ethically. What official will chance a secret, corrupt transaction when the public is likely to find out? What repressive plan will be carried out when it is revealed to the citizenry, not just of its own country, but the world? When the risks of embarrassment through openness and honesty increase, the tables are turned against conspiracy, corruption, exploitation and oppression.

But WikiLeaks isn’t restricted to leaks about oppressive regimes.

WikiLeaks will be the outlet for every government official, every bureaucrat, every corporate worker, who becomes privy to embarrassing information which the institution wants to hide but the public needs to know. What conscience cannot contain, and institutional secrecy unjustly conceals, WikiLeaks can broadcast to the world.

But how could it possibly be used as a journalistic tool? How does a journalist verify that the information is correct, that the documents come from where it’s said they are from? This could indeed become an efficient tool – for spreading misinformation and rumours. Though the documents are supposed to be scrutinized by the public, it is not necessarily so that the public knows much about the exact things being leaked – if they did, there would be little point leaking them.
Here’s what the site FAQ has to say on the issue.

WikiLeaks opens leaked documents up to a much more exacting scrutiny than any media organization or intelligence agency could provide: the scrutiny of a worldwide community of informed wiki editors.
[...]
If a document is leaked from the Chinese government, the entire Chinese dissident community can freely scrutinize and discuss it; if a document is leaked from Somalia, the entire Somali refugee community can analyze it and put it in context. And so on.

Steven Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy has some objections against the project:

In the absence of accountable editorial oversight, publication can more easily become an act of aggression or an incitement to violence, not to mention an invasion of privacy or an offense against good taste.

“As we saw with the Saddam hanging video this week, gatekeeping is over”, responds Martin Stabe, and continues:

There is no way to require “accountable editorial oversight” as a barrier to entry to the public sphere anymore — a determined leaker will find a way to publicise their material online. But that doesn’t mean a responsible journalist has to cooperate with a project that carries a high risk of being used irresponsibly and seems to abdicate all responsibility for the actions of its users.

2- Thecase of the Youth of Kef condemned for downloading an mp3 (See the flash animation here) of a HipHop song criticizing the brutality of the Tunisian police service (more info here and here)- (an other flash animation about the song).

In his blog, Sami Ben Gharbia writes:

Worse than a taboo the Tunisian penitentiary system is a state affair, a question of national security. All those who dared approach the topic, reveal its secrets or point fingers to its dysfunctions dearly paid their imprudence.
/…/
While in other countries the freedom of information includes the public right to access information detained by the public authorities, in Tunisia we are confronted with security obsessed reflex and a pseudo requirement of national interest, thus depriving the citizens from their elementary right of being informed. That justifies the lead cover imposed by the local authorities who, under biased pretences do no longer feel any obligation to publish categories of essential information about the country and hence the censure about divulgation of any information on the criminality rate or the number of prisons and its population… as if these information belonged to private heritage of the governing authorities!

Two ambulances that had been somehow damaged long before the July Israel-Hezbollah conflict even began were dragged out of a salvage yard, where they had been rusting for months or years. They were taken to a parking lot and smashed up even more, inside and out. Then fresh gurneys were placed inside one of them. An intentionally amateurish video was then taken of the two vehicles, in order to show the damage. That night, as planned, some Red Cross workers feigning minor injuries rushed into a hospital in Tyre, and recounted a tale of horror: their ambulances had been attacked by Israeli missiles. The media was notified.

According to Ethan Zuckerman, the claim “was later repeated by Australia’s foreign minister Alexander Downer, who stated ‘it is beyond all serious dispute that this episode has all the makings of a hoax.’”

An excellent example of citizen media reporting. Or was it? Here comes the twist.

In steps Human Rights Watch, who go to Lebanon to set the facts straigth. This results in a report saying the attacks did happen.

They conclude that the ambulances were both struck by missles, one of which removed Fawaz’s leg, but that the missles were likely Dense Inert Metal Explosives fired from an Israeli drone.

Now, can we trust Human Rights Watch? They were the ones reporting about the attack in the first place. Do they just want to save face? Zuckerman writes:

HRW’s report does include a major correction – they no longer characterize the attack as coming from a manned Israeli aircraft, but now believe the attacks came from a remote-controlled drone.

Zuckerman in his analysis points to an important factor – time.

What’s disturbing to me about the situation is the timeframe. Zombietime and affiliated rightwing commentators got their story out very quickly, offering their analysis within days of the incident. HRW’s response is coming almost half a year later. This makes sense – HRW actually went to Lebanon and interviewed people who saw the incident, while Zombietime looked at press photos and offered theories. While HRW’s analysis is critical in determining what really happened on July 23rd and demanding accountability from the Israeli government, this report is hardly likely to call as much attention to the incident as it recieved when it was initially reported.

This story is just one example of a key issue in our current – and future – media world. Trust.
Everyone has an agenda. Future media consumers have to be very much aware of that.

If governments are bothering to block citizen media, it’s because they the power and threat of this new media. After all, censorship is the sincerest form of flattery when you’re an anti-government activist.

Also read Ann Condi’s essay about the lack of interest in democracy among her colleagues in China, and Andrew Lih’s response on the similar lack of interest in the States, both discussed in Zucherman’s post and around the media blogging world.

A desire for self-improvement and personal development is found to be a key driver of India’s blogosphere with a large majority of online users reading blogs to stay informed about world events. They enjoy reading about technology the most, followed closely by news and education. Elsewhere, technology content ranks low.

One seventh of Indian net users blog, three quarters of them men.

Dina Mehta at Conversations with Dina rightly points out that the survey is only representative of MSN portal visitors.

This is by no means representative blogosphere in India – not many bloggers I know think highly of MSN or go to the portal at all.

Probably the percentage of women is a bit higher than the study indicates, and also the other percentages might differ in a more representative poll, but it is interesting none the less to see these trends.