An innovative Kenyan social network project, which combines crowd sourced stories and citizen reporting, is set to be rolled out in a few weeks. The Kuyu Project is aimed to enrich local content and empower the youth through story sharing. It's a digital literacy initiative, which aims to use the Web to revolutionise East African social media through the networking site - StorySpaces. StorySpaces was demonstrated at the Media 140 conference in Barcelona. It is a mobile-based social networking site where youth can share stories and search for important news logged on other young people's accounts.

Spotlight: media140 Frontiers: Barcelona

Tumblelog of Paul Higgins and Sandy Teagle - Futurists from Melbourne and Brisbane in Australia.

Pat Kane's 'Notes from everywhere' in the Caladonian Mercury

[video]

Charities, non-governmental organisations and bodies which fund the arts should do more to financially support citizen journalism, according to writer and activist Pat Kane.

@eirikwfossan's presentation from day two at media140 bcn

Backing away from the more humanitarian-based issues this paper focused on, many papers worldwide having been sensationalizing reports. Journalist Dani Madrid criticized this tendency at the media140 conference in Barcelona, saying, "We have turned a country into an object for our own profession... We have transformed Japan as something distant instead of remembering that there are 25,000 casualties and devastation to a country to be rebuilt."

European journalists reporting on the Japanese earthquake had their coverage "contaminated" by their own domestic policies, Catalan journalist and academic Dani Madrid said today.

Speaking at the media140 conference in Barcelona via video link Riyaad Minty said a key strategy for Al Jazeera was to get in early and make contact with key bloggers and sources in countries to act as citizen reporters for the news outlet.

Amnesty International is introducing its own news unit in a bid to produce its own stories. Speaking at media140 in Barcelona, Amnesty International head of news Rob Winder said the organisation would like to continue working with news outlets, but also play a larger role in the production of news based on the information it has access to.

Throughout media140 so far, when it has come to a discussion of business models for journalism, most speakers seem to be in agreement that there is no single solution, rather the path is multi-directional and a mix is best.

Here at Journalism.co.uk we understand data is one of the buzzwords in journalism at the moment, it is why we have built our news:rewired conference around the topic, and its popularity was certainly clear from the packed room at Media140 today, where journalist and online communications specialist Carlos Alonso spoke on the topic.

Writer, musician and activist Pat Kane opened the #media140 conference today, with a keynote speech focusing on the relationship between traditional news organisations and new media, on both an editorial and business level.

"I've never lived something like that and I don't think I will live something again like that," - these are the words of El Pais staff writer Joseba Elola, reflecting on his work on the diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

Quantity over quality - that needs to be the mindset for mobile journalists, UK online video journalist Adam Westbrook said today at the #media140 conference in Barcelona.