Global Voices is an international community-based organisation, consisting of writers, bloggers, translators, journalists, researchers, digital activists and experts that aim to translate and report on what is being said in citizen media worldwide. It started as a nonprofit project at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School that grew out of an international bloggers' meeting held in December 2004. The organization was founded by Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca MacKinnon. In 2008, it became an independent non-profit organisation incorporated in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
When Global Voices was formed, Its objectives were: first, to enable and empower a community of "bridge bloggers" who "can make a bridge between two languages, or two cultures." Second to develop tools and resources to make achieving the first objective more effective. It has maintained a working relationship with mainstream media. Reuters, for example, gave Global Voices unrestricted grants from 2006 to 2008. For its contribution to innovation in journalism, Global Voices was granted the 2006 Knight-Batten Grand Prize. Global Voices was also recognized in 2009 with the University of Denver's Anvil of Freedom award for contributions to journalism and democracy.
The organization stated its goals :
Global Voices achieves these goals through four key initiatives:
Newsroom: The multilingual newsroom team reports on people whose voices and experiences are rarely seen in mainstream media. Global Voices has a team of regional editors that aggregates and selects conversations from a variety of blogospheres, with a particular focus on non-Western and underrepresented voices. Contributors are volunteers.
Translation: The Lingua volunteers make stories available in dozens of languages to ensure that language is not a barrier to understanding.
Advocacy: The Advox team defends free speech online, paying special attention to legal, technical and physical threats to people using the internet to speak out in the public interest.
Empowerment: Rising Voices provides training and mentorship to local underrepresented communities who want to tell their own stories using participatory media tools.
Global Voices has a community blog for Global Voices contributors to share stories. ItÃÂ also has special projects from time to time such as the Civic Media Observatory.
Services: Expert translation, editorial, and mentorship services from a global community, fuelling the Global Voices non-profit mission.
Global Voices has organized biannual summits and bloggers meetings for their virtual community to meet face-to-face.