Ethan Zuckerman

Latest posts by Ethan Zuckerman

Flags as graphs of social issues

  10 May 2005

Icaro Doria, a 25-year old Brazilian reporter for Lisbon-based Grande Reportagem magazine, has produced a beautiful set of eight images, part of a series called “Meet the World”. The images distort national flags to turn them into graphs of statistics about social and political issues. Brazil's flag becomes a map...

Children's Voices from Darfur

  29 April 2005

In February 2005, Human Rights Watch sent researchers Dr. Annie Sparrow and Olivier Bercault to Chad to talk with refugees who'd fled from the bombings and Janjawid militia attacks in Darfur. A pediatrician, Dr. Sparrow usually gives crayons and paper to children to entertain them while she interviews their parents....

Blogging from Togo – Views of the Post-Election Protests

  28 April 2005

The post-election situation in Togo is getting increasingly complicated. Faure Gnassingbé, the son of deceased Togolese leader Gnassingbé Eyadema, has claimed victory with 60% of the votes counted in Sunday's election. But there are widespread accusations of election fraud, and opposition supporters have responded to Gnassingbé's election with violent protests....

“Theory of Everything” focuses on Global Voices

  27 April 2005

Ben Walker's “Theory of Everthing” radio show is getting love from all over the blogosphere – Mark Frauenfelder at Boing Boing has favorably compared it to Ira Glass's excellent This American Life, one of the best programs available on American radio. Ben's latest show, available for download as an mp3,...

Introducing bridge blogger Ndesanjo Macha

  20 April 2005

Sometimes the Internet helps you find interesting people halfway across the globe. And sometimes it helps you find out that interesting people from halfway across the globe are living in your neighborhood. I had the second sort of experience Sunday, when I travelled to Brattleboro, Vermont (100km away, but in...

New faces in the bridgeblog index

  15 April 2005

I was recently introduced to the concept of “wiki gardeners”, people who tend wikis, cutting away spam, fixing formatting and grammar, and generally tidying up the place. I just spent a few hours on the BridgeBlog Index, and I'm struck by what a good metaphor gardening is. We “planted” the...

A technical guide to anonymous blogging – a very early draft

  13 April 2005

The Electronic Frontier Foundation posted an excellent guide to safe blogging a few days back. While the guide is quite rich in tips to ensure you don't reveal too much personal information while blogging, it doesn't look very closely at the technical issues associated with keeping a blog private. I...

Isaacmao.com blocked

  7 April 2005

Isaac at the Harvard Global Voices gathering, photo by Jeff Ooi. As some of our readers have pointed out, Isaac Mao's site – isaacmao.com – is being blocked. Isaac gives part of the story on his backup site, helpfully titled “Not isaacmao.com”: The site of isaacmao.com has been blocked due...

Reporters Sans Frontieres

  7 April 2005

Our friends at Reporters Sans Frontieres are running a contest to honor blogs defending freedom of expression. Contest finalists were posted yesterday, and the Global Voices community is well represented. Jeff Ooi's Screenshots, and Rebecca Mackinnon's NKZone are both nominated in the “Asia” category. Hoder's Editor:Myself is one of the...

The view from Riyadh – Saudi Jeans

Ahmed, a pharmacy student in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, maintains the excellent “Saudi Jeans”, a link blog that looks and feels a little like Scripting News, if only Dave Winer lived in the Middle East and read dozens of Arabic newspapers every morning. In between posts on everything from the role...

Global Voices on the Radio

  4 April 2005

Clark Boyd of The World – a joint project radio show produced by the BBC and WGBH, Boston – spent a good chunk of time with some of the Global Voices team last Tuesday. The result of his efforts was a feature story on today's edition of the program. Clark...

Global Voices Brainstorm

  1 April 2005

We held a brainstorming session on Global Voices at the Berkman Center Tuesday lunch earlier this week. It was a good chance for Rebecca and me to present some of the thinking we've done about how Harvard can support Global Voices efforts and what our work at Berkman is likely...

Sokwanele Blog in Zimbabwe

  30 March 2005

Zimbabwe is preparing for parliamentary elections tomorrow. The outcome is hardly in doubt. Most observers expect Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party to win in a landslide, garnering at least 75% of votes. This is not because Zanu-PF is especially popular, but because the election process is believed to be so...

Elina Karakulova in Bishkek

  30 March 2005

The recent events in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, have been somewhat difficult for outside observers to understand. Unlike the Orange revolution in Ukraine, where sustained, widespread opposition protests led to the overturning of fraudulent election results and a new government, a very rapid series of events following parliamentary elections caused Askar Akaev's...

Blogger Profile: “Owukori”, aka Sokari Ekine

  29 March 2005

It's easy to get the impression, reading most popular weblogs, that all bloggers are white American males obsessed with technology. If that's your impression of the blogosphere, you're reading the wrong blogs. A good place to start your re-education is “Black Looks – Musings and Rants by an African Fem”,...

New “About” page

  24 March 2005

I've written a new About Global Voices page. If anything is not clear or if you have further questions, please post a comment there.

Blog libel suit in India

  16 March 2005

Mediaah! is no more. The controversial media criticism weblog, run by Pradyuman Maheshwari, editor of the Maharashtra Herald in Pune, promoted itself as a “brutally unbiased” critic of Indian media, especially the massive Times of India. With the tagline, “The Media's Media. No-holds-barred news and commentary on the Indian media”,...

NewsILike and Aggregator Artistry

  15 March 2005

I'm experimenting with NewsILike.com, a new aggregator site put together by a team that includes Jim Moore, Berkman colleague, Darfur activist, and Global Voies ally. Jim introduces the concept of “aggregator artistry”, the idea that aggregators can be a creative expression in the same way that blogging is. NewsILike has...