News
Meet the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine
In the new year, 2010, one of the most startling stories was of mass suicides. About 50,000 people were affected. Legal cases were filed. The interwebz were abuzz with the tale of how they did it. There was talk about a website that was responsible for this. The blogosphere went into a frenzy discussing the ‘new lease of life’ that these suicides provided. Videos of people caught in the act found their way onto popular video distributing spaces. And for everybody who talked about it, it was...
Fill the Gap Report
In 2009 Hivos and the Centre for Internet and Society started a mapping study Digital Natives with a Cause? What we found was that many people see the potential of Youth, ICT and development, but nobody knows exactly who the Digital Natives are and how you can unleash this potential. At Fill the Gap we invited youth in the Netherlands to discuss and respond online (via Twitter) to six statements. Read the summary.
Join our discussion on ICT, Youth and Engagement
In 2009 Hivos and the Centre for Internet and Society started a mapping study Digital Natives with a Cause? What we found was that many people see the potential of Youth, ICT and development, but nowbody knows exactly who the Digital Natives are and how you can unleash this potential. Today we are starting at Fill the Gap an online and offline discussion. Join us!
Digital Natives in the News
Following the publication Digital Natives with a Cause? Fieke Jansen (Hivos) was interviewed by OneWorld (in Dutch). You can read the full article here.
New Publication: Digital Natives with a Cause?
This new publication shows that young people are sensitive and thoughtful and more then willing to contribute to change in their societies. It proves that the common complaint that young people are not interested in politics, is mainly a result of insufficient understanding of the world of youngsters. Digital Natives - youths thriving on digital technologies - are sensitive and thoughtful; it is time to listen to them.
Blogging Toward Utopia
The growth of Internet usage in the Middle East and North Africa is among the world’s fastest: between 2000 and 2007 usage increased almost 500 percent, more than twice the rate of increase in the rest of the world. Just as elsewhere, this has led to Middle Eastern cyber-optimism - among the users of digital tools and Internet watchers alike. It is a widely-held hope that the coming of Web 2.0 can move closed societies towarddemocratic values and governance.New Media in Syria
What is the role of the new media in this context of bought criticism? Hopes that increased globalization and advanced media technology bring about political liberalization have all but vanished. We now know that authoritarian regimes are more resilient and that economic liberalization and technological modernization are not necessarily coupled with democratic reform. The new media, especially the Internet, blogs and Twitter, have indeed created a counter public, a space where state hegemony...Iran: Public Dissent in the Age of the New Media
Some three months after the controversial presidential election in Iran on 12 June 2009, the country is still far from back to normal. After a period of relative silence, thousands of protestors used the symbolic Quds day, usually a day of rallies in support of the Islamic Republic, to protest the election fraud and the violence that followed it.