Global Voices at BlogNashville

In the pre-blog world, the only way you could know what an ordinary Iraqi or Chinese person thought about what was happening in their country was by reading quotes in the paper or hearing soundbites on the radio or TV - all selected and filtered by journalists. Now you can go directly to the blogs of people in other countries and get their unfiltered opinions and personal perspectives. But are we doing enough to break out of our national echo chamber? Are we doing enough to challenge the picture of the globe as painted by our mainstream media? Are we still accepting MSM's spin on international events too uncritically? Are we still buying their decisions about what world events we should or shouldn't care about, lock stock and barrel? I'd argue that the answers to all these questions are mostly "yes."

The "blogosphere" as generally described in the U.S. media tends to focus heavily on American bloggers, and especially political bloggers. But there's a whole world of bloggers out there. In fact, I believe that the most interesting and original parts of the global blogosphere are outside the United States. The political impact of blogs appears to be greatest - or most disruptive, some might argue - in countries that do not have a free press. The global blogosphere also has the potential to help counteract the fact that the U.S. mainstream media ignores most countries on the planet most of the time. Citizens' grassroots media will tell you stories from countries rarely covered by the New York Times or CNN. 

Watch this space for updated information and pre-conference discussion (in the comments section below) on my Global Voices session at Blognashville on May 7th. As you will see from the schedule, the GV session is part of the second of three conference "tracks" looking at global and local blogging communities and the way they interact with one another.

The Global Voices Project is headquartered at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society but built by a global community of bloggers who believe that everyone on the planet has the right to speak and be heard. It is an embryonic attempt to help index, aggregate and highlight the stories and conversations emerging from blogs and other forms of online citizens' media around the world. We also hope to encourage and facilitate the development of blogging communities everywhere. We're still in the beginning stages of developing the tools to do this in a manageable way. So this session will be a great opportunity to pick everybody's brains for new ideas.

This session will give an overview of some of the most dynamic and exciting blogging communities that have sprung up around the world. We will brainstorm on the tools now available - and the tools we wish we had - to follow and make sense of this fabulous cacophony of citizens' voices. And we will discuss how bloggers in the U.S. and around the world can help to break out of our national echo chambers and build conversations across the global blogosphere.

Suggestions? Questions? Arguments?
Please hit the "comments" link. 

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