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While in Southern Africa there is a contrast of Zimbabwe with an arguably “non free” press and South Africa with an arguably “free” press, both countries have similar problems with accessibility isssues for the communities. These issues relate to basic infrastructure issues, such as access to the hardware for blogging, which illustrate the digital divide [...]

Satellite television has been the primary driver or catalyst of the changes going on in the Arab media sphere, says the session’s moderator — Keith Porter from the Stanley Foundation. Porter positions panArab news channels like Jazeera and Arabiya as the spearheaders of this move towards a much more aware and accountable media regionwide, Satellite [...]

This post was contributed by Kookie Habtegaber of MediaChannel The media has the most impact and attention in the North, where life is more or less impossible without telecommunication and digital connection. Since the population of this part of the world also has a monopoly on the world’s riches and resources one way or another, [...]

Co-founder of Global Voices Rebecca MacKinnon led a discussion about how technology is affecting Chinese society with rapporteur Rachel Rawlins (Global Voices), and Jean-Marc Coicaud (UNU), Rudy Chan (China.com), David Schlesinger (Reuters), Michael Tong (NetEase.com) and Marcus Xiang (PDX.CN). Although Westerners originally thought freedom of expression and information on the Internet would bring down the [...]

Tom Glocer – Reuters Originally uploaded by We Media London. Tom Glocer, CEO of Reuters talks during the session “Big Idea 4: The Democratization of Media – Where does trust fit in?” at Day 2 of the We Media Global Forum. Photo by Paul Hackett, ReutersHighlights from Tom’s talk: The growth of participatory media is [...]

Head of global news at Reuters, Geert Linnebank welcomed the delegates to the new worldwide headquarters of the world’s largest information company. He said that new content publishing capabilities are the latest challenge to established news organizations. Reuters has always used the latest technology available to distribute the news. Linnebank said that technology at the [...]

Tom Glocer, CEO, Reuters Mark Thompson, Director-General, BBC Jeffry Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute (via satellite from New York) Nitin Desai, Special Assistant to the Secretary-General of the United Nations Richard Dreyfuss, Actor and Activist Wadah Khanfar, Director-General, Al Jazeera Network Channel Carolyn McCall, CEO, Guardian Newspapers Richard Sambrook, Director of Global News, BBC Dave [...]

The BBC website is a main news source for many people around the world. The site actively invited visitors to discuss items in the news, in the section Have your say. See also this page where the BBC asks visitors for their ideas, pictures and video files. I had a chat with moderator Sally Taft, [...]

As a We Media Fellow or a ‘”WE-J”, I was asked to blog around today’s 3:10 pm session, provocatively titled: Meet the Digital Assassins. Having just arrived at the BBC and still slightly jetlagged from my flight from New York, I decided to ask what exactly a Digital Assassin is before blogging about it. What [...]

Live blogging 16:00 Big Idea 3: Conversation with Richard Sambrook (BBC)-interviewed by Andrew Nachison (Media Center) Question: Have you heard anything here that has opened your eyes to send you thinking in another direction? RS: We easily get trapped in either/or mindset: MSM vs. Bloggers, get over it. We live in a remixed mash-up world. [...]

14.10 session moderated by Paul Holmes (Reuters), with (left to right on stage) George Brock (The Times), Helen Boaden (BBC), David Gyimah (Video Journalist), RachelNorthLondon (blogger), Andrew Hawken (MSN.com) Live blogging: Paul Holmes introduces the session, with a video of 4 minutes talking about citizen journalism’s role in the London bombings, RachelNorthLondon (http://rachelnorthlondon.blogspot.com/) talks about [...]

Future Forward is the name given to the small exhibition in the BBC studio where today’s Wemedia global sessions are being held. British Telecom mans a small stand, showing off the early results of a research project modestly called ‘New media for a new millennium‘ (NM2) . Future Forward is the name given to the [...]

In the Ciziten Journalism Forum being held right now, the main question is: “What can we do to energise this army of citizen journalists out there?” A short BBC item first highlighted how many videos and images made by citizens are already part of mainstream news reporting. Tsunamis, bombings, floodings, accidents: there is little that [...]

Richard Dreyfuss, Actor and Activist Commented on previous panel—– – Entertainment. The future of network news. It wasn’t meant to make money. Now it’s all about profit. Part of the Oxford U Research in teaching curriculum. Not teaching civics affects the Republic of Democracy. Sovereignty given over to Special Interests. * Reason* Logic Old rules [...]

The WeMedia conference is about ‘a society connected by digital networks’ and most of the discussion revolves around the new relations between audiences and traditional media companies. So far little has been said about specific technology advances – we know about blogs, we do, but what else is out there? One of the companies showing [...]