Media and blogs - Part 7

posted by julia on 2006/07/24 00:50

[ Media and blogs ]

"Lebanese and Israelis dialogue on the web": According to J-M. Manach in Le Monde, websites, blogs and communication through chats enable people on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border to follow the war and its consequences in more direct and personal way. It also makes dialogue possible between "neighbours" accross the borders:
"ce qui est le plus remarquable, c'est qu'au-delà des diatribes idéologiques et des réactions épidermiques, les bribes d'un véritable dialogue commencent à poindre entre internautes israéliens et libanais. Faisant fi de leurs divergences politiques, ils profitent du côté humain, pour ne pas dire intime, des blogs pour engager une conversation qu'aucun média traditionnel ne pourrait permettre."

This article led me to a reflection on the role of blogs in the Kosovar-Serbian conflict... I have rarely witnessed true dialogue on blogs dealing with Kosovo and Serbia. On the contrary, the reader's comments on blogs such as Kosova Report or on news sites such as Der Standard are mostly one-sided, radical, and often include verbal attacks on commentors holding diverging views.

Apart from (international) multilingual news websites like RFE/RL, SEE Times - which do not allow readers' comments -, there are only very few (local) online initiatives which allow space for reflection and dialogue: Actually, kosovakosovo.com (a co-operation of Beta, KosovaLive and the CDRSEE), which presents news and personal comments "from both sides", is the only such website I know of. Nevertheless, the project is running out of money and has significantly reduced its scope (cf. the latest announcement). And although its articles are relatively well read (7000 pages read on a daily basis), there is no real space for spontaneous readers' feed-back...

Further reading on the role of internet in conflict situations: Sabine Ballata, Konflikte online am Beispiel Kosovo (pdf), Kakanien Revisited, 30.3.2006. Sabine is moderator of the Imagine-SEE blog on Kakanien Revisited.


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