Blog Carnival: Mexico – Citizenry, Violence and Blogs  · Global Voices
Juan Arellano

This post is part of our special coverage Mexico's Drug War.
Global Voices in Spanish is interested in encouraging blogging and  promoting blogger networks, and is currently doing so through its ‘Festivales de Blogs‘ (Blog Carnival) [es]. The Carnival helps generate original content with a certain level of reflection and analysis, and participating bloggers can at the same time benefit greatly from the visibility their work gains by being referenced on Global Voices (GV). Let's look at the details of our Carnival:
Scope: Mexico
As the geographic base and center of out first 2011 Blog Carnival, GV has chosen Mexico, a great country going through a period of violence that has yet to cease. Aside from this, we have a number of collaborators in Mexico that have supported us in the spread of this virtual event. While the majority of the bloggers, and the most well-known ones, are found in Mexico City, we also expect participation from bloggers in cities like Guadalajra, Monterrey, Puebla, Toluca, Ciudad Juárez and many others.
We would like to clarify that participation is not restricted to bloggers or blogs that are dedicated exclusively to the topic indicated in the following paragraph – any blog and blogger can participate.
Topic: Citizenry, violence and blogs
Violence has a constant presence in human societies, but in some cases it becomes a preponderant element, interrupting that which we consider the normal development of our lives. A current case of this in our hemisphere is the violence in Mexico, of the so-called ‘Mexico Drug War,’ which exemplifies our incapacity, as well as that of the governments, to deal with this problem.
In a context like the one described there are always stories that are not shown via traditional media, stories of resilience that we should all know. Nevertheless, reflection is quite needed and we can therefore ask ourselves, what opinion do Mexican Internet users have regarding the international image of violence that has been created with respect to Mexico? Is it true? Is it exaggerated?
Is the media, including the Internet, contributing to the polarization of opinions or a responsible criticism? Is the media part of the solution for this context of the conflict or simply a further instrument of this violence? Is regulating the media's coverage of the violence recommended? If so, who would do it: readers, the media, NGOs or the government?
Are there tangible results from activist campaigns (online and otherwise) against the violence in Mexico? Has Internet use had a bearing on the prevention or visibility of the violent acts taking into account that not all of these acts are published in traditional media? Could or should new forms of media go beyond the work of coverage and reflection?
Participation:
Any Mexican blogger living in the country or not, can participate  by publishing a post on the topic in their own blog. Foreigners living  in Mexico can also participate. The post has to be an original post, in  other words, created by the blogger, not copied from another source,  and published during the period set for participation in the Carnival.  The structure, style and length of the post can be decided by the  blogger.
Bloggers can pick how to focus on the topic. It can be through one of  the suggested questions or from a focus that the blogger considers  convenient. When bloggers have published their post for the Carnival,  they must email  juan.arellano at globalvoicesonline dot org with the  following information:
Name of the author
Name of the blog
Title of the post
Corresponding link or URL for the post.
A button is available, the image in this post, for bloggers to use  and paste on their blogs as a signal that they are participating in the  Carnival. Once the button is added to a blog, the blogger must reference  this post.
At the end of the period of participation we will proceed to arrange   and summarize the participating post in order to publish a summary post   for Global Voices. Depending on the amount of participation we will be   able to quote posts or not, this is mainly due to reasons of space. Any   questions may be directed to the email mentioned above. Results from our previous Blog Carnivals can be seen from: Colombia, Ecuador [es], Venezuela, and Peru.
Chronology:
Activities carried out throughout the blog carnival will be as follows:
- Call, invitation and dissemination. Through this post and during the duration of the period for participation.
– Period for participation. From August 1 to 10.
– Selection period and the creation of a summary with the participating posts. From August 11 to 15.
– Summary post published on Global Voices in Spanish. August 16.
Note: This is not a competition, therefore there will be no winners  or losers. It is about looking for contributions, collaborations and  testimonies on the proposed topic, in order to develop a broad, varied  and updated picture on the topic of society and participation through  the Internet, in Mexico.
Participation on Twitter
We would also like this Carnival to be present and active on Twitter, and as such we are making the Carnival's official hashtag available to all Twitter users here: #vocesmx
This hashtag will do all the work of spreading information and announcements for participation in the Carnival, but we would also like there to be tweets on the topic of the Carnival with this hashtag. We will be following it and a selection of the most interesting tweets will be published in our summary post.
We look forward to your support, collaboration and participation!
This post is part of our special coverage Mexico's Drug War.