Connecting people in repressed societies by using new technologies that encourage education, communication and participation. D2 puts information into the hands of people who are most in need. While censored information places communities and individuals at risk, advances in mobile and internet technologies are reshaping societies around the world. Every day these technologies become cheaper, simpler and more reliable. D2 is developing information and communication tools to address the needs of the vulnerable and disempowered communities with whom we have been working. Our work strengthens social bonds within and among communities, fostering networking and civic participation to improve lives, expose tyranny and strengthen democracy. We have been working for two years with the Burmese community in Thailand, Bangladesh, India, and China as well as with resettled Burmese populations in Indiana, Washington, DC and New York. D2 staff have published and presented research on Burma with an emphasis on technology use by displaced Burmese groups. In addition to Burmaʼs borders, we have conducted research in Cuba, Armenia, Mali, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Israel.

Take Action Now While the Darfur scorecard is a powerful tool, it is effective only when coupled with the action of American citizens. Below are five ways you can use DarfurScores.org to take action to help stop the genocide in Darfur.

Welcome to the Hub -- the world's first participatory media site for human rights. Through the Hub, individuals, organizations, networks and groups around the world are able to bring their human rights stories and campaigns to global attention and to mobilize action to protect and promote human rights. Watch and forward the 60-second Hub video. What You Can Do On the Hub The Hub is an interactive community for human rights, where you can upload videos, audio or photos, or simply watch, comment on and share what's on the site. You can use each media item on the site to encourage individuals to learn more and to get involved by providing direct links to resources, advocacy groups, campaigns and actions that they can take to make a difference. Additionally, you can connect with groups or create one of your own to feature your work on the Hub. Every week you can watch the three most urgent videos contributed to the Hub, and hand-picked by our editors. Who can join the Hub? Anyone with a valid email address can join the Hub. Users of the Hub include human rights workers, students, academics, filmmakers, journalists, activists, teachers and concerned citizens worldwide.

A New Website for a Changing World SocialDocumentary.net is a new website that features documentary photography from around the world-images and words that explore the human condition. Easily Create Documentary Websites About Critical Issues Facing Our World Today Professional and amateur photographers, journalists, NGOs, students-anyone with a story to tell and a collection of good photographs-can easily and affordably begin creating websites on SocialDocumentary.net. Global warming, international justice, post-conflict reconstruction, HIV/AIDS, or life in Afghanistan or suburban America are just a few of the themes that you can find on SocialDocumentary.net. The goal of this website is to make our lives richer and more informed about issues affecting us and our world today. Powerful photographs can also lead to meaningful change in the lives of ordinary people. SocialDocumentary. net provides tools for photographer to inform viewers how to take action-either by supporting NGOs doing work on the issues, or by engaging in direct political action. Not all documentary photographers are concerned with action. Many photographers featured on SocialDocumentary.net are concerned with subtleties of the human experience and exploring personal themes. Photographs on SocialDocumentary.net-whether of struggling farmers in Africa or of suburban teenagers in Philadelphia-offer a fresh way to look at the world and a greater understanding of humanity. The secondary goal is to create an online image bank of quality photographs documenting all aspects of the world created by an international collection of photographers. This will enable students, college professors, journalists, and anyone else to easily see any part of the world in quality digital imagery and gain valuable information about the subjects they are viewing. We encourage all photographers, everywhere, to use this site as a tool in their own image-making and documentary exploration. We also encourage n

iamnews.com, the open content exchange spot for international publishers and contributors is opening its gates for professional/pro-am journalists - writers, photographers, video journalists.

DoGooderTV enables nonprofit organizations to present new videos and existing media assets to new audiences. Once site visitors see the compelling stories of nonprofits, DoGooderTV gives them a direct way to donate to the organization, join, volunteer or simply find out more information. In addition to direct donations, site visitors can also create community around issues that are important to them, develop a giving circle, and easily connect their friends with the organizations they care about. DoGooderTV is building on the success of sites such as MySpace, Flickr, YouTube and many others that allow users to create community and share content. DoGooderTV is using nonprofit media as the hook to link individuals to causes, organizations and other individuals who share a passion for an issue. The goal of DoGooderTV is to grow a new generation of interested, engaged and active philanthropists and volunteers using web tools that have already demonstrated tremendous power. DoGooderTV is a project of See3 Communications, the leading provider of media services to nonprofit organizations.

The Challenge Posted January 16th, 2008 by admin "It's a familiar scene. Following the onset of a major disease outbreak or natural disaster, government agencies, non-governmental organizations and the local community must join forces and act quickly to alleviate suffering. You, your colleagues and groups that don't normally work together now need to communicate, assemble teams, share information, make plans and coordinate a response. Yet despite everyone's best intentions, a wealth of resources, deep expertise and tremendous effort, you still face challenges in trying to work together. The response once again proves confused, inefficient and far less effective than it should have been. As a population waits for help, delays mount up, resources are wasted and too little arrives too late. Will the cost, once again, be measured in human lives?"

About Media Helping Media PDF Print E-mail Thursday, 19 October 2006 Media Helping Media (MHM) has been set up to provide training resources and a voice for those involved in the media in transition states, post-conflict countries and areas where freedom of expression and media freedom is under threat. Training resources The aim is to bring together a variety of training resources which are available for all to use for the benefit of anyone working in the media in difficult circumstances. All are free-of-charge and can be reproduced, as long as Media Helping Media (or any guest authors) are credited. Contributed articles Some articles will be contributed by registered members of MHM who are active in media freedom and human rights organisations and, as such, these articles may not offer both sides of an issue and may not be balanced. Other articles will be written by journalist or media leaders who claim to be under threat and who make no attempt to offer balance or impartiality in the pieces they submit. MHM doesn't seek to achieve balance on their behalf.

MediaStorm: Visionary Journalism Weaving Stories Producers start by cutting audio, creating a "radio edit" of the story. Then they work with the journalist to craft a working narrative. A cohesive story emerges, and then it's time to pair the images with the audio. For that, they use Final Cut Studio. "Final Cut is our workhorse," says Storm. "Our producers live inside Final Cut all day long. It's a simple and powerful tool. It does everything you need it to do, yet I can teach a new producer how to create our type of project in a day." Images are exported out of Aperture at twice 1080p resolution, giving producers the flexibility they need to experiment with shots. "We pull everything into bins in Final Cut, and we use a lot of labeling to organize it," says Storm. "It's very simple: We use green for a picture that's in, red for one that's out, blue for a maybe. We have a very visual environment inside Final Cut to get things done quickly."

View my * My Posts * Twitter 10 Ways Newspapers are Using Social Media to Save the Industry March 11th, 2009 | by Woody LewisComments newspaper imageWoody Lewis is a Social Media Strategist and Web Architect. He authors a blog at woodylewis.com about social media strategy for newspapers. These days, everyone knows that one of the hottest stories any newspaper can cover is that of its own demise. The collapse of print advertising and the downturn in sales, at the news stand and through subscriptions, has led to a frantic search for new ways to monetize content that's often available online for free. Social media gives any business an interactive channel to communicate with its current and future customers. For newspapers, that channel can increase the chances of survival in a market where commoditized information has diminished the value of individual brands. Here are ten ways newspapers are using social media to save the industry.

'The dedicated cit-j agency model isn't the way forward' Posted: 09/02/09 By: Kyle MacRae email this story | post a comment Profile picture of Kyle Macrae Scoopt, the 'citizen journalism' photo agency I co-founded in 2005 and sold to Getty Images in 2007, is no more. On a personal level, that's a little sad: like losing a child, albeit an errant one that left home long ago. But, as a business decision, I understand Getty's move completely: fundamentally, the Scoopt model doesn't work. That's not to say that people don't want to sell their newsworthy images; many of them do. Nor is to say that the mainstream media has little appetite for such pictures; it most certainly does (note, that's newsworthy pictures we're talking about, not 24,000 snapshots of snow). But it is to say - in my personal but rather battle-weary opinion - that the dedicated cit-j agency model isn't the way forward.

50 Incredible Photography Techniques and Tutorials

Afghanistan: Pictures Not Taken 'When the press started to feel empowered to show and tell the truth, it was only a matter of time before the military and government powers would retaliate.' By Travis Beard Journalist Ash Sweeting rides in a pickup with the Afghanistan National Police. Photo by ©Travis Beard/Argusphotography. Nothing has more power to communicate the destruction and despair of our time-especially from the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan-than photography. But in the sanitized and censored environments now of government and military control, taking the picture can be as difficult as getting it published. In coverage of these wars, freelance photojournalists are indispensible. One after another, news organizations have abandoned the task of informing the public. For editors back home, photojournalists-and the images they transmit-are problematic. But it's not the photographers who pose the problem; it's the truth their images tell. During the Vietnam War, there was the searing image of nine-year-old Kim Phouc running down the road with her flesh melting and fusing into her body after a napalm strike and her brother running in front of her with an expression that recalled Edvard Munch's "The Scream." This photograph spoke to people in ways that words had failed to do. These children were ones the Americans were supposed to be saving, not bombing. Images such as this one did much to turn the tide of that war, but if they did, it was because they conveyed important truths.

Weighing the Moral Argument Against the Way Things Work 'We have covered Africa this year, so we won't be doing anything for a while.' A photo essay by Marcus Bleasdale A child's coffin awaits burial as an uncle negotiates payment with the undertaker. The child's father was unable to attend due to "military duties." Infant mortality in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is 128 deaths per 1000, according to the International Red Cross. Photo by © Marcus Bleasdale/IPG. More than three million people have died due to fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo over the past five years. At least another three million people have been forced to flee their homes. This messy conflict at the heart of the continent has often been referred to as Africa's first World War. Most of the deaths come from hunger and disease among a population of 55 million people struggling to scratch out a meager subsistence living in this vast nation covered by dense forests and jungle.

Long-Form Multimedia Journalism: Quality Is the Key Ingredient As a producer of social documentary projects-viewed on digital platforms-Brian Storm talks about the excitement of doing journalism in this way, at this time. A conversation with Brian Storm MediaStorm describes its mission as ushering in the next generation of multimedia storytelling by publishing social documentary projects incorporating photojournalism, interactivity, animation, audio and video for distribution across multiple media. Brian Storm is the president of MediaStorm, a production studio located in Brooklyn, New York, which publishes multimedia social documentary projects at www.mediastorm.org and produces them for other news organizations. In an interview I did with Brian on December 30, 2008, he spoke about how he envisions the future of long-form, multimedia journalism from the perspective of its creation, distribution and economic viability. An edited version of our conversation follows.

NEW YORK-The panoramic photograph of a bootless soldier, sprawled almost gracefully in death in Afghanistan, might have made readers pause for a moment if it had appeared in a newspaper or magazine. But when "Taliban Soldier" filled a New York City gallery wall-blown up to near life size-it made the art world take note. Taken with a large-format camera, the monumental 4- by 8-foot print was presented for $15,000 four years ago at the Ricco Maresca Gallery, a Chelsea stop usually favored by folk and fine art collectors. It catapulted the Paris-based photographer Luc Delahaye, who shot the image on assignment for Newsweek, into international prominence. And it signaled a turning point for a small club of international war and "conflict" photojournalists, who now see their images appearing regularly in gallery and museum shows. Suddenly, the reality of war, famine, poverty and pain has turned into fine art. "Great collectors are always looking to be delighted by something that they don't know about, and this excites some of them," says Bill Hunt, the former Ricco Maresca co-director of photography who introduced Delahaye to gallery crowds.