Reporters Without Borders today published a Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents (in English, French, Chinese, Arabic and Persian), in which experts and bloggers from all over the world advise Internet users, especially those in repressive countries, how to set up their own blogs and get them known, while preserving their personal anonymity.
Create your own blog, remain anonymous and get round censorship!
Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they're tremendous tools of freedom of expression.
Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.
Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.
Many Internet experts helped produce this manual, including US journalist Dan Gillmor, Canadian specialist in Internet censorship Nart Villeneuve, US blogger Jay Rosen and other bloggers from all over the world.
Rebecca MacKinnon, co-director of Global Voice Online, says, "The Handbook for Bloggers is for people who want to be serious participants in the emergent online global conversation: How to set up a quality, credible blog. How to get it noticed. And.. if you’re in a country where there government might not like what you’re saying, how to avoid getting in trouble when you by-pass the information gatekeepers and talk directly to the world."
The Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents will be on sale in bookshops from 22 September for $10. It can also be downloaded in five languages (English, French, Chinese, Arabic and Persian) from the Reporters Without Borders website: www.rsf.org.
The entire handbook can also be viewed online here.
