Category: transparency

Map Kibera

On Wednesday morning I got the chance to Skype with Mikel Maron and Erica Hagen about Map Kibera, their project to collaboratively map a slum in Nairobi, Kenya. My favorite part of the interview? When Mikel explains how Map Kibera is translating online data into real-world action. A hint: “print’s cool.”

On Wednesday morning I got the chance to Skype with Mikel Maron and Erica Hagen about Map Kibera, their project to collaboratively map a slum in Nairobi, Kenya. The interview was for Global Voices’ Technology for Transparency Network, a project that I’m unspeakably thrilled to be a part of.

My favorite part of the interview? When Mikel explains how Map Kibera is translating online data into real-world action. A hint: “paper’s cool.”

The full case study went up today, along with a podcast of our chat. Check it out, and make sure to browse through the full list of projects around the world that use online tools to push for civic engagement and government transparency.

Live from DC: “21st Century Statecraft”

I’m liveblogging Secretary Clinton’s speech on Internet freedom at The Morningside Post.

I’m liveblogging Secretary Clinton’s speech on Internet freedom at The Morningside Post. You can follow along over there or below:

There Will Be Ink

The research I did in Uganda in January has just been published.

There Will be Ink: A study of journalism training and the extractive industries in Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda (PDF) is the product of research I conducted with five other students from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in the spring of 2009.

We surveyed media coverage of the extractive sector and interviewed African journalists who had training in business and economic reporting. Our goal was to identify the training practices that are most helpful in teaching journalists how to encourage government transparency in the extractive industries through their reporting.

The journalists surveyed said that journalism training had improved their coverage of the extractives, but we concluded that there are other challenges in the African media landscape that are not addressed by training. These include low salaries, lack of resources, pressure from government and advertisers and the lack of freedom of information laws. The report includes recommendations for organizations planning journalism training activities in countries with extractive sectors.