Webs@Work

Here’s a great guide on citizen media, aimed at non-technical readers. Produced by Rising Voices, the outreach arm of Global Voices Online, An Introduction to Citizen Media, offers context and case studies on how people across the world use blogs, podcasts, Web video and digital photography to engage in an unmediated conversation transcending borders, cultures and languages. A Spanish version is available.

From the Introduction:

A change is taking place in how we communicate. Just ten years ago we learned about the world from newspapers, the television, and radio. Professional journalists would go to faraway places and bring back stories, photographs and videos of situations they witnessed and people they met.

Just ten years ago we rarely, if ever, communicated directly with the journalists themselves. Leading members of society wrote editorials expressing their opinions about various issues, but the rest of us could only share our opinions and thoughts with a small group of friends.

Bow thanks to new tools like weblogs, it is now possible to easily publish to the Internet. From Turkey to Kenya to Bolivia, everyday people are starting to share stories and opinions with the rest of the world. While this new form of communication is now freely available, most people participating still live in the wealthy neighborhoods of urban cities.

While there are already several excellent introductions to the principles of citizen media, they tend to focus on citizen media initiatives in North America and Western Europe. This guide hopes to showcase some of the most exciting and innovative developments on citizen media in the non-Western world.