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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

2005 and 2006 saw the popular recognition and commercial embrace of a phenomenon which is set to deeply affect the intellectual life of developed and developing nations for years to come. Yahoo! bought Flickr. Google acquired YouTube. Rupert Murdoch purchased MySpace, and declared the future of his NewsCorp empire to lie in the user-led content creation spaces of such social software Websites more than in its many newspapers, broadcast channels, and other media interests (Murdoch, 2005). Finally, TIME broke with its long-standing tradition of nominating one outstanding public figure as 'person of the year', and instead selected 'you': all of us who are active in collaborative online spaces (Grossman, 2006).

This paper outlines the concept of produsage as a model of describing today's emerging user-led content creation environments. Produsage overcomes some of the systemic problems associated with translating industrial-age ideas of content production into an informational-age, social software, Web 2.0 environment. Instead, it offers new ways of understanding the collaborative content creation and development practices found in contemporary informational environments.