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Panelists: Georgia Popplewell (moderator), Juliana Rotich and Amira Al Hussaini and BlogHer Contributing Editor Snigdha Sen (I didn't see her included on the panel description but she is definitely behind the table....)
You can find the panel description on BlogHer: Women Across the World.
We'll be starting in just a few moments... I'll update as the panel progresses. Still setting up, Georgia welcoming people, from Trinidad, (Caribbean Free Radio) - in this panel we're going to look more at differences than similarities. In Trinidad 18-20% of people have internet internet access, in the US maybe about 70%
Georgia is speaking about women who were invited as panelists could not attend due to house arrest (see Elisa's post) and lack of a visa.
Introducing panelists. Snigdah - she was raised in India and was a journalist. She wasn't connected to the blogosphere, she thought journalists and bloggers were separate. She met Lisa Stone and everything changed. She blogs on Blogher starting with news, starting and then reflects on the more personal perspectives. In India there's about 4% internet access (country with a 1 billion people) - they start blogging due to some event, something happens so they blog it - they speak out. She isn't sure if people are blogging on their cell phones, but cell phone use is higher than internet use. They have the multi lingual problem, every state in India speaks a different language. She thinks technology hasn't caught up with language - internet = english, she thinks that will change. More blogs are coming in regional languages.
Juliana from Kenya lives currently in Chicago. She's going to talk about why Kenya is considered a success story - they have a higher literacy rate. Internet penetration is 3%. They've had democracy since 2000 and this has brought economic growth, increase GDP, online participation including women blogging - Kenyan blogs webring, African women's blog site (Note: this site has gotten huge traffic and has exceeded its bandwidth as of this writing, check again later if you cannot access it). One man started the Kenyan webring because he kept finding tourist blogs and that wasn't what he wanted, he wanted real info, not tigers. (Kenya Unlimited). She is speaking about another woman who is not here: Ory Okolloh, Eye on Kenyan Parliament, is keeping an eye on the Kenyan Parliament. Parliament is not always forthcoming in providing info about leaders, background education, etc.... They're using open source software.
A question from the audience (Was that Lisa Williams who asked?)- does traditional media pick up the Kenyan blogging work? Juliana says they have talked about it, they know it is there, but they don't see specific stories coming out of what is happening on the blogs. She thinks it would serve traditional media well to acknowledge this work.
Almira - Arabic translator, Silly Bahraini Girl - from Bahrain tiny island connected to Saudi by a causeway. She's a journalist and could not write what she wanted because of self-censorship. You have to be respectful and are brought up not to speak out against government or elders - 'you don't want to be put in jail or exiled'. She blogged anonymously, she presented one "face" in her work and another "face" on her blog. Eventually she wasn't anonymous. Now she doesn't feel the need to write in mainstream media any longer.
Middle East blogosphere--- she's been monitoring them closely over the last year, she's seeing the theme of oppression and censorship, blocking of blogs if government doesn't like what was written - bloggers arrested in Iran, Asia, Bahrain. Put in jail, bloggers create campaigns to free bloggers, they're released and life goes on because there is always a new story.
Question - was it a problem to be no longer anonymous? She says it isn't because she is still self-censoring. She tells about a blogger who was sued in court for calling a minister stupid, because of this she has to self-censor. It would do her no good to end up in jail.
Does it matter if she writes English or Arabic - she went to English school and she would rather reach people who read English. Also, if she wrote in Arabic she would have been more censored - so she censored herself or
