Ashoka Civic Media Competition

Ashoka Changemakers®, with the support of Google, is seeking innovations in Citizen Media.

Submit your solutions before September 14, 2011, and help boost media access and participation around the world. Visit www.changemakers.com/citizenmedia today to enter or nominate an idea.

As world events like Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and the Japanese tsunami disaster have shown, YouTube and social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook have the capacity to turn just about anyone into a journalist.

It's a trend that leaves some traditional media outlets skeptical, or even downright disgruntled. But when media has the chance to spread out to include more voices, particularly in regions where it's a challenge to get the news out, citizen journalists can offer news and insight on critical events that would otherwise go under-reported.

That's why Ashoka Changemakers came up with a competition that seeks the most innovative projects in citizen media. The Google-supported contest, called "Citizen Media: A Global Innovation Competition," was launched in July and drew a hefty 426 entries from 75 countries. Ashoka just announced 11 finalists who were selected for their ability to bolster media access and citizen participation when information is limited.

Meedan is community for Arabic-English dialogue and translated current affairs.

Sourcefabric provides open source tools and services for journalists including Airtime for radio automation and Newscoop CMS for newspapers.

Our mission is to amplify diverse and progressive voices advocating for change throughout the Middle East and North Africa using digital media.

FRONTLINESMS ALLOWS YOU TO TEXT MESSAGE WITH LARGE GROUPS OF PEOPLE ANYWHERE THERE IS A MOBILE SIGNAL.

5th Pillar is an organization that strongly believes that the people that make up a democracy are the strongest members of such a system. Without the people a democracy would not exist. As such, we believe that if each one of us changes our own habits, we will be attacking corruption at its roots, and corruption will cease to exist. That is why we hope that everyone who learns about the organization will take a pledge to not give or receive any bribes. By taking the pledge you are helping us reach our goal of a corruption free nation.

The Serval Project making commnications available anywhere, anytime

I recently moderated two discussions between the finalists in the Ashoka Foundation's civic media Changemakers competition. The discussions, which spanned time zones and countries, were hosted using a Google Hangout. (While there were a couple bumps using a Hangout for this purpose, including some latency and jitter to limited bandwidth, the platform worked reasonably well.)

We were joined on the first Hangout by Esther Wojcicki from Creative Commons, who served as a judge for the competition. We talked with contestants about their work, what inspired them, what challenges they face in their work, and how current events in the Middle East and beyond are changing the civic media space.

Ashoka Changemakers hosted a Google+ Hangout for the finalists of the Google-sponsored citizen media competition. The Hangout was moderated by Alex Howard, Government 2.0 Correspondent for O'Reilly Media, and the conversation was simply inspiring.

This Hangout included the following finalists:
- Mobile Journalist on an SD Card
- FreedomBox
- Frontline SMS
- Serval

We were also joined by Esther Wojcicki, competition judge, citizen media guru, journalist and educator.

A great conversation - see for yourself!

The Mobile Media Toolkit shows you how to use mobile tech to enable citizen media and encourage independent voices. Learn how to capture quality audio and video on your mobile phone.

Dr. Paul Gardner-Stephen introduces the Serval Project in one minute for ChangeMakers 2011.

We're building software for smart devices whose engineered purpose is to work together to facilitate free communication among people, safely and securely, beyond the ambition of the strongest power to penetrate. They can make freedom of thought and information a permanent, ineradicable feature of the net that holds our souls.

At InSTEDD, we envision a world where communities everywhere design and use technology to continuously improve their health, safety and development.

CGnet Swara is a platform to discuss issues related to Central Gondwana region in India. To record a message please call on (080) 4113 7280.