· January, 2010

Stories about Citizen Media from January, 2010

Global Voices in Haiti: Litmus Test

Georgia Popplewell, on the ground in post-earthquake Haiti, looks into reports of "tear gas" being used at a food distribution point, and visits the Carrefour area of Port-au-Prince. The second in a series of special reports.

29 January 2010

Malawi's President to formally declare new love on Valentine's Day

Malawians are digesting news that the country's president Dr Bingu wa Mutharika will engage his former tourism minister Callister Chimombo on Valenetine's Day 14 February. A couple of bloggers have wished the president well in his new found love following the death of his wife Ethel three years ago.

29 January 2010

Video: Call for Aid in the Peruvian South due to Flooding

The state of emergency the city of Cusco and surrounding areas has moved many locals to make videos and upload them to the web, trying to get mass media to pay attention to the drama lived by villagers throughout the area who are now homeless, isolated and without food, water or electricity.

28 January 2010

Peru: The Loss of Local Rock Radio Stations

Peruvian radio stations catering to fans of rock music are being taken off the air, with business reasons often cited as the reason. However, many bloggers say there is still a market for the music.

27 January 2010

Nigeria: Bloggers discuss the massacre in Jos

On January 17th, violence erupted in the central Nigerian city of Jos. In the following hours, reports of the conflict spread as witnesses reported mobs armed with knives and machetes roving among burning houses, mosques, and churches. The conflict is ostensibly sectarian: Jos is a major city along Nigeria's “Middle Belt” – the fault line which divides the country's Christian-majority south from its Muslim-majority north.

26 January 2010

Kenya: Abdullah al-Faisal stirs confrontation

As on Thursday 21st Jan, the government of Kenya was at its nerves end trying to raise over US$,400,000 in a bid to deport Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal to his home country, Jamaica using a hired plane. This was one of the many failed attempts to get al-Faisal out of the country due to his terrorist nature which was deemed a risk to the East African Country, Kenya.

25 January 2010

Ghana: Regional Minister, Kofi Opoku-Manu, Going Under?

Ashanti Regional Minister, Kofi Opoku-Manu, has recently taken great heat for remarks he made during a speech to supporters of the ruling party, National Democratic Congress (NDC) on January 6th. According to Ghana’s Ato-Kwamena Dadzie, Opoku-Manu “urged party supporters to resort to violence to resolve their differences.”

25 January 2010

China’s Orwellian Future

John Chan (陳冠中), an author from Hong Kong who is currently living in Beijing, has written a novel entitled The Fat Years: China, 2013 (盛世 – 中國, 2013). The story...

25 January 2010

Guatemala: United for Haiti After Earthquake

In 1976, an earthquake killed nearly 23,000 people in Guatemala. Now, 34 years later, Guatemalans are united to help Haitians with their own earthquake tragedy, through a wide variety of fundraising efforts and other signs of solidarity.

24 January 2010

Russian Blogger Harassed For Marrying Chinese

RuNet Echo

Maria Gromakova became a victim of comprehensive virtual attacks of Russian extreme nationalists. Online harassment eventually turned into a real-life nightmare forcing Maria and her family to leave Russia. She tells her story to GVO.

24 January 2010

Azerbaijan: 20th anniversary of Baku pogrom and Black January

Today marks the 20th anniversary of Black January, the day when the fledgling independence movement in Azerbaijan was brutally suppressed by Soviet troops ostensibly to curtail inter-ethnic tensions in the capital, Baku. Bloggers in Armenia and Azerbaijan, however, remember the date differently.

20 January 2010