2010 Special Coverage · Global Voices

We look back on the year 2010 and remember the citizen media stories about events that changed the world.
World AIDS Day is a great opportunity to share knowledge and spread constructive ideas. The Rising Voices guide “Blogging Positively” shows how online citizen media can be used to raise awareness and engage in conversations about HIV/AIDS around the world.
A new blog sponsored by the UNFPA called Conversations for a Better World has commissioned Global Voices bloggers to help them highlight online conversations about population and development around the world.
Global Voices explored how internet and communication technologies can assist human development, supported by Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
Days after a police strike caused chaos in the country, Ecuadorians are trying to understand what happened on September 30, 2010. Bloggers are among those asking questions and trying to find answers: Was there really a coup attempt? What did the police want to gain from the strike, and was the government somehow involved?
Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites bloggers around the world in posting about the same issue on the same day. This year on October 15, 2010 bloggers are joining voices to discuss: water.
For approximately 2 billion people throughout the world, access to basic foods is anything but guaranteed. Food security is a complicated issue that is susceptible to many forces. Insecurity results from climate change, urban development, population growth and oil price shifts. These are factors that are rarely confined by national borders. These stories were commissioned by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting.
The summer of 2010 turned out to be a tragic one for Russia. Following several weeks of unusual heat, wildfires began to spread in western Russia. More than one hundred villages were destroyed by the fires, at least 50 people died, and thousands were left homeless. Russian blogs and social media became a major source of independent information.
The Gaza flotilla clash occurred on 31 May 2010 in the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea, when Israeli naval forces seized a flotilla of six ships carrying international activists, known as the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla”, who were planning to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian supplies.
The monsoon season this year has certainly not been a blessing for Pakistan. Pakistan is facing its worst flood in the past 80 years, as heavy monsoon rains which have been falling since July 2010 have caused severe flooding on the Indus river plains, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, lower Punjab and parts of Balochistan.
Ten years ago, world leaders developed a blueprint for improving the social and economic situation in the world's poorest countries. To ensure progress, United Nations member states agreed to adopt a set of targets called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The deadline for achieving these eight goals is 2015.
Tensions finally reached boiling point in Jamaica after months of the JLP government's resistance to the United States’ extradition request of alleged drug don Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke. Coke is wanted on several counts of drug and arms trafficking charges in the U.S. Once the Prime Minister announced that the extradition warrant would be signed, law and order began to unravel.
On April 11, 2010 citizens in Sudan went to the polls for the first time in 24 years. A whole generation that was born, raised, educated and graduated under one totalitarian government rule has been able to cast their vote.
What will the World Cup mean for the millions of South African living below the poverty line?  What will the event mean for the rest of the African continent? South Africans and citizens of all nations will be expressing their thoughts on these and other questions in online citizen media. Global Voices bloggers will listen!
An 8.8-magnitude earthquake rattled Chile in the early morning hours of February 27. Global Voices bloggers keep watch of Chilean online citizen media.
On January 12, a devastating 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti. In spite of power outages and interruptions in phone services, citizen media reports of the quake are streaming out via phone and internet.
In January, a dispute over Chinese government hacking of dissident Google accounts resulted in an ultimatum from Google saying they would cease filtering search engine results in China or possibly leave the country.
The United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship, known as the ‘Red Shirts’ have maintained protest camps in various parts of Bangkok for two months (since March) but were forced to disperse when soldiers launched a crackdown causing many casualties.
As part of the BBC's SuperPower Season about the internet, BBC News and Global Voices are working together for two weeks to see how online citizen media could help complement some of the BBC's international reporting – and vice versa!
Happy Birthday to Global Voices, all our readers, authors, editors and translators. The global blogosphere has come a long way. And so have we.
Immigrant high school and university students in the United States have used the internet effectively in building activist networks to support the passing of a law called the DREAM act.
Global Voices is partnering with the website NewsTrust for one week in a “news hunt” about the global economy. How is the world coping with the global recession? And how are journalists and bloggers covering the story?
Thanks to a special arrangement with The Economist magazine, Global Voices authors from around the world now occasionally submit articles to the Economist's blogs.