The real Caribbean?
Written byGeorgia Popplewell
“Is the Caribbean Global Voices portrays the true Caribbean?” asks Trinidad blogger Taran Rampersad, in a thoughtful post pondering the ability of certain kinds of initiatives to represent communities adequately.
Written byGeorgia Popplewell
2 comments
Does Global Voices purport to offer a “true” picture of any region? Global Voices, as far as I can see, focuses on regional blogospheres, which everyone knows are rarely “representative” of the population of any country.
What a project like Global Voices can perhaps do, however, is help bridge the divide that normally exists between a country’s bloggers and the rest of its population by widening access to citizen media tools. I’m hoping, therefore, that a strong outreach thrust is among Global Voices’ future plans. If it isn’t I’d be very disappointed.
It’s a great point, K. I try to make the point in every interview I give about GV or in every talk I present. We can’t be representative of the views of any country because blogs aren’t, at present, representative either.
There’s a great deal of enthusiasm within our community to undertake outreach projects to bring more bloggers online. Unfortunately, we haven’t had the success yet in raising money to sponsor these efforts… or at least, we haven’t had as much success as we have in raising money to work on the content of the website. As the guy who writes most of GV’s grants, this is one of the major things I’m focused on right now – trying to find funding for us to support members of our community in outreach efforts.